Overgrowth is a 3rd person beat ’em up in where we play as Turner, a rabbit war-hero trying to find a peaceful place to call home. As adorable as a world inhabited by talking, humanoid animals sounds, it is shockingly devoid of any humor or happiness. Slavery, racism, murder and all manner of barbarisms is par for the course here, with rabbits being the lowest of the low in the species hierarchy. Basically not something you’ll likely want your kids playing for those assuming this is simply a wacky physics based fighter, even if you can change the blood color.
Starting off you will have a choice of three fully featured campaigns. Story-wise it makes the most sense to start with the second campaign called Lugaru to learn about Turner’s past and why he is so, to put it bluntly, edgy. It is far more difficult than the first campaign however, and will not ease you into all the game’s mechanics, making starting here not recommended. Once you choose one and are finally given control, one of the first things you’ll notice is how fast Turner runs and how incredibly high he can jump. That is not unique to him, rabbits while weak are extremely agile, with fights between them often looking like something out of an anime.
It won’t take long for you to need to bash someones adorable face in. As soon as you step into the village you find it under attack from slavers then task yourself with stopping them. There is a stealth system in place where you can crouch and choke an enemy out from behind if you choose to do so. On the other hand, it is never enforced, so you can very well go in running and deliver a sweet jump-kick to the first person you see. Turner doesn’t really have an advantage over any other foe, whatever you can do so can the AI, and both take the same amount of damage to go down. What matters here is how well the player fights. Given that you’ll rarely be facing off against a single opponent, the odds are in their favor, so kicking when they are down and bringing a knife to a fist fight goes a long way.
The fighting is dirty, brutal, and visceral. It is all accomplished with a single attack button as well, and focuses more on when to strike than any kind of fancy combos. Observation is quite important too. Seeing which enemies have weapons or if there are any laying around can go a long way. They will attempt to arm themselves whenever possible and due to being outnumbered, it can be difficult to stop them in the midst of battle. Objects are not glued to their hands though, even if you find yourself unarmed, a vicious blow that sends someone reeling will likely cause them to drop whatever they are holding. Blocking at just the right time will disarm them with a judo throw and doing so when someone throws a weapon at you will allow you to catch it. Once again, whatever you can do they can as well. The situation will constantly be changing and even a well thought out plan may need tweaking after the first punch is thrown.
There are three difficulty options to choose from with the first two being easy enough for most. Combat is unpredictable though, an unlucky hit can send you off your feet and your foes are just as fond of kicking people when they are down as you are. You will not get far by simply button mashing despite what difficulty you chose to play on. Whenever you lose balance you need to press your roll button to quickly get back up. It is important to know how to time a roll as well since you can very easily break your own neck if you try it when you are about to hit the ground. There are few things more embarrassing than jumping off a building with a front flip trying to look like a badass, only to break your neck in front of a puzzled guard. As soon as you die, you can immediately retry that section so putting a bit of flare into things is often irresistible.
Holding the crouch button while you attack allows you to hit them with a low kick, to try to knock them off balance. It is a simple control scheme, but still offers quite a range of options for anyone willing to master it. There is a noticeable difference when fighting different animal species such as dogs. For one, you can’t choke them out from behind, you are too weak. You’ll need a weapon to slit his throat with if you are going the sneaky route. Rats, on the other hand, are sneaky and wear camouflage making it difficult to gauge their numbers while scouting. Then there are the death machines that are the wolves. They are rare and your only hopes of defeating one is to put your strong bunny legs to full use with jump kicks while they are trying to claw you to pieces.
Most missions will have enemies unaware of your presence, letting you form some kind of plan. You have no control over whether or not Turner chooses to take a weapon, which does feel odd when he chooses to go unarmed for no explicable reason. As fun as the fighting is, the game will occasionally break things up with a platforming section. They work well enough and will constantly be auto-saving to make sure you lose little progress for those not proficient at that genre. For the most part, they do a rather good job at giving you an indication on how to navigate these sections with subtly placed glowing fungi or claw marks. It can be difficult to remember just how bloody far Turner can jump, so keep that in mind if you are unsure how to progress further. You are free to take all the time you want, you’ll never be chased or have some form of timer during these scenarios.
Probably what I found the most surprising is just how much dialogue there is. Every character will have quite a bit to say throughout your adventures and it is typically interesting stuff. Characters will come and go as they are killed off in this brutal world, with few of them being unmemorable. It really fleshes the world out having morally diverse people. Some are just plain evil for the sake of it while others have good reasons for doing what they do. You never know who you can trust and Turner as well-intentioned as he is, is no saint either. I would argue that the writing is just a tad too dark, it wouldn’t kill to put in a few lighthearted scenes. It is a problem contained to the first campaign only, the other two do a better job having something other than angst, though not by much. That slight nitpick aside, the overall narrative is decent and does a solid job at keeping you invested, instead of feeling unwanted as you head to the next fight.
The ending is just terrible though, it ends too abruptly and feels like a cliff-hanger for a sequel Except it likely isn’t if the third campaign is considered cannon which “showed” the fate of Turner in the aftermath of his journey. Another flaw that will eventually start to annoy you is that if you die, the cut-scenes play out again. It’s not a huge deal since you can skip it all at the press of a button, though defeats the point of having an instant replay feature. It doesn’t happen all the time thankfully, it just feels bizarre when it does. To add in yet another one of its negative points, let’s mention the controller support. You will not be able to control the menus in any way which seems like a simple enough fix, especially considering how long it spent in Early Access and their high asking price for this title.
Your third and final campaign called Therium 2 is actually a mod that the developers found so impressive they added to the main game. And I’d agree with them there, this mod makes a fantastic addition. It is quite a change of pace from the usual formula of dark & gritty into something more surreal. You play as a troubled rabbit simply known as Ghost, trying to live his new life out of the slums with his sister. He immediately gets the crud beat out of him by the local guards and tossed into a jail cell for reasons unknown. Awakening from his beating that left him out cold, a mysterious figure slips in the key to his cell and are tasked with sneaking his way out. At least that is how the mod author envisioned it, you still possess all of Turner’s moves and having likely played two campaigns previously, it is all too possible to rampage your way out if you desire.
That lack of direct confrontation consists all throughout. Your goal is not to kick people in the head so hard they forget their childhood, but to make your way to a strange portal that leads to another area. Later on, you’ll encounter new enemies that are far deadlier than anything you’ve previously faced to further encourage a more distinct way of playing. It also features multiple branching paths for different endings to add even more replay value to this unique experience. Therium does take place after the events that occurred while playing as Turner and you will spoil that story if you decide to jump directly into it. Whether or not it is actually considered canon is unknown.
The modding community for Overgrowth seems pretty healthy and does feature even more impressive content to delve into. One in particular called Undergrowth blew my mind in its ambition to create a randomly generated open world survival game. You’ll need to drink water, eat food, and can take missions, among a great deal of other things that really change the title. Others mods allow you to shoot lasers from your eyes, play it in first person, or add Mortal Kombat levels of blood to the fights. With the implementation of Steam Workshop, downloading them is a breeze. There is quite a bit to see once you finish the official content. Even without all of those extra motives to keep coming back, I likely would see myself doing just that due to its fun combat system. There is just something enticing about having no health bar and wondering if you can withstand another well-placed blow, try to catch a knife or roll out of the way, and so much more at any given moment. What Overgrowth does, it does extremely well, the rest is just icing on the cake.
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