I’ll be honest: I was a little bit conflicted when I first saw Overthrown. I had seen a few little developer clips on TikTok, and it felt a bit like a game that was trying a bit too hard to be quirky or have an air of pretence to them—much like the early clips I saw of Hokko Life that leaned into that “what if Animal Crossing was better” narrative that was polluting the discourse at the time.
This was why I jumped on the opportunity to get a hands-on preview of Overthrown because, deep down, I knew at its core, it had an idea worth exploring. It’s a solid reminder that sometimes, social media can make you a lot more cynical than your profession. While it’s still an early build, I gotta say I really like what Overthrown is doing!
For the preview demo, the game plops you into a world with almost no setup or backstory. You’re a young, red-haired woman, and it’s apparently up to you to craft a civilization. You are apparently also a god since you can pull trees from their roots, throw them with reckless abandon, and run so fast you skip across water like Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s an absolute riot.
“While it’s still an early build, I gotta say I really like what Overthrown is doing!”
And if you think I’m making it sound sillier than it actually is, you don’t know the half of it. Overthrown really lives up to its name—you can pick up resources, buildings, even your own town’s people and chuck them clear into the horizon. The only way it could’ve been any better is if they had that little Team Rocket-style blink in the air.
It’s definitely taking the piss, but it actually makes for a truly unique experience. You can definitely see how these gameplay mechanics make for an experience that is both fun and functional. A lot of games can simply streamline menus and make it so you can select multiple items to craft instead of one at a time, but none that I can think of let you rip a tree from the ground and throw it like a football into a Lumber Mill for a massive amount of wood planks.
But despite its silliness, there is the foundation for a really interesting sim management game in Overthrown, and that’s probably why it works so well. Since players are the rulers of their kingdom, it’s not just up to them to run around hucking trees across the horizon, but they’ll need to set taxation and salaries for their townspeople, keeping them happy as well as safe and well-fed.
“But despite its silliness, there is the foundation for a really interesting sim management game in Overthrown, and that’s probably why it works so well.”
Unfortunately, the demo was a bit limited in what it allowed me to do, but it did seem to hint at some deeper sim elements present within the game. There’s a fairly interesting degree of buildings available to unlock through various categories of structure—Farming, Amenities, Infrastructure, etc.—and it seems like there will even be a fairly wide variety of cosmetic customizations for players to make their town truly their own. Also, kudos to Overthrown for being one of the few games to include Outhouses as a structure. I think the last game that thought about that was Dragon Quest Builders.
If there’s one area where Overthrown suffers, however, it’s definitely the combat. It’s fairly rudimentary, considering how over the top the rest of the game is. However, since it’s still fairly early, I’m hoping the final release will feature some creative abilities that really bring the silly fun the rest of the game has to the combat. A lot of Overthrown’s trailers seem to suggest there’s a lot more to it, but during my play-time, I didn’t really get to experience it. Being able to punch enemies into the distance like God Hand would be a really nice touch.
Overgrown definitely charmed me—certainly a case of don’t judge a book by its cover, or in this case: TikTok videos. While its premise is simple and could be glibly described as “just another cozy game,” the way it utilizes high-octane action gameplay in stark contrast to the rest of itself genuinely kept me hooked. Combine that with a bright, colourful and adorable aesthetic and a pretty calm soundtrack, and you’ve got something that is going to be great, seemingly in spite of itself.
No official release date is set for Overthrown, but the planned launch should be in 2024, with added content coming in 2025.
