Overbowed Steam Charts & Stats

Great Metroidvania!

Perfect. No notes

"Overbowed" is a charming little pixelated metroidvania that is quite short and dense. You play a bow-wielding knight on his quest to free a cursed kingdom. Aesthetically its simple design works in its favour: a simple palette change makes quite a different tone and atmosphere for a new area (along with the quirky ost). Overall it is made quite well, even a little brooding. Mechanically it is also quite simple, but has some nice little gimmicks along the way: You collect charms and can equip more the more the bosses you defeat. It is kind of like the charm-system in Hollow Knight but in lite. Different charm combinations change your firepower and are also your main tool at puzzlesolving. Quite nice. The use of the bow as your primary weapon is a little unusual and implemented well if you get the hang of it. Plus there is wall grabbing and enemy hopping, the latter two with a major caveat because you cannot jump on enemies or grab walls while you are in I-Frames, which can result in some unvoluntary hits in a spike-pit and near frantic enemies. Also, 100%ing the game can get a little grindy because you have to farm some gold for all the complementary upgrades. Nonetheless a good low-res and short entry in the genre. If you are not sure, you can still get it on sale.

Great metroidvania with cool bosses and pretty unique upgrade system. Worth it even at full price.

This turned out to be a nice, little Metroidvania! It has two big gimmicks. The first is that weapon upgrades come in the form of charms. They each add a special characteristic to the arrows the player fires, but charms work dynamically, mixing effects so there’s a lot of variation in the kinds of attacks you can use. It’s fun to experiment, too. The second gimmick is that there’s no jump upgrade. There’s no double jump– you only get the single jump and innate wall-jumping. You can use a vine upgrade for your weapon to produce platforms that allow you to access new places, but the overall jumping experience remains the same. The map is big and fun to explore, but I found the area variation to be lacking. A lot of the environments were pretty similar even if each location has distinct details in architectural styles. The lack of any kind of jump upgrade meant that a majority of the game map has to function under certain templates, with rooms never getting that big. There’s a lot of claustrophobia in the level design. The overall adventure is nice, however I don’t think the scarce story amounts amount to much. There’s a lack of pizzazz in the storytelling and while the game was really fun throughout, there lacks anything that makes the journey truly unforgettable. I was craving a Metroidvania and this game did the job.

Great game! Like others have said, the beginning of the game (when you are pretty much powerless) is the most challenging part, but if you stick with it a little beyond that, it gets to be pretty rewarding to find and combine different upgrades to feel overpowered at times, or to come up with creative ways to overcome obstacles and find secrets. I also liked the overall dark atmosphere, retro presentation, and the bits of lore that you get from the dialogue of the NPCs (which itself was sparse but well-written and did a decent job of leaving some mystery to the imagination of the player). I do wish it were a little longer, so that might be my only gripe, but it was also well worth the time and money I spent on it. I'm not much into roguelites, but I'm interested in checking out the developers upcoming roguelite Flightless Fables now, just because of how much I liked this game, and I hope they consider also making something more like Overbowed again in the future, but perhaps just with more content.

Gotta love a game that lets you find some absurdly overpowered combo to abuse

[h3]Ehhhh[/h3] There's a point where you play so much of a genre that while you appreciate some stuff, the negatives pop off particularly much. First off, the balance. You start rather weak and while there's nothing terribly frustratingly bad, the game's primary gameplay loop is not fun enough to have the segments you repeat feel like you're just getting there. But eventually (can't tell you exactly when) you end up mowing through most enemies like they're made of tissue paper, and even the bosses feel underpowered (final boss I beat on my second try and I didn't particularly get better at it). This might be great for players who love the endgame powerhouse feeling, but I prefer more balanced difficulty curves. Now, an important detail about how the game overall plays as a Metroidvania: there's a two hazard immunity upgrades, some utility optional ones, and then everything else is a "badge/charm" for your arrows, granting either straight effects or combos. You basic mobility thus remains rather monotone throughout the game with traversal itself feeling the same at all points. There are a couple of portals, but otherwise expect any backtracking to have long treks where you do melt enemies but the obstancles remain the same. The game gets fairly open about halfway through and thus you can sometimes miss critical pathways and instead go in the "wrong" direction. Don't get me wrong, getting lost is part of the MV experience, it's just that getting lost here means you need to will keep doing stuff you aren't going to be enjoying too much. An extra annoyance is that you lose a few coins in each death. This isn't terrible in itself since there's few vendors and only one has particularly high prices, but when paired with the fact your initial max coin value is rather low, this impact can get annoying. The game "offsets" this by having all coin spewing chests regenerate indefinitely and by having one of the charm have enemies throw up coins like candy, but these both feel like bandaids on a bigger issue. Also, while I am not a "I [b]have[/b] to complete the game 100%" like some other Metroidvania players, it'd be irresponsible not to mention how tons of the collectibles are in rooms which aren't initially on the map's collections, so you're gonna have to bump your head around a fair bit if you can to get the final few achievements. Some of them are in logical nooks or crannies, but others feel deliberately obtuse. Well, not even that since there's a speedrun achievement (understandable, a fairly standard one which I rarely go for but which is popular enough to warrant rewarding) and one for beating a particular boss without the optional lantern upgrade (which anyone with a bit of game literacy will have bought a long time before even peeking into said boss's area).

[h1]A Nod To The Gameboy Era[/h1] [h1]Things I Like About Overbowed:[/h1] [b]Some Compliments[/b] [list] [*]A decent metroidvania with a retro pixelated art style. [*]The "gating-abilities" are the charm you can equip on your bow. Vine charm allows your arrows to spawn vine bushes, which creates extra layers of "walls" you can wall-jump to. Defeating bosses rewards you with new charms and sockets. [*]The game encourages you to experiment with your newfound abilities, combining different charms to create new effects. For example, Vine charm and fire charm makes your arrows hit hard and explode on impact. [*]Each level contains unique gimmicks and an interesting boss. [*]Tons of hidden secrets throughout the levels. [/list] [h1]Things I Dislike About Overbowed:[/h1] [b]Some Complaints[/b] [list] [*]I wish the developers could leave the retro parts to just the aesthetic and gameplay. Some mechanics need modern touch-up. [*]Simply losing money on death feels terrible. A way to retrieve lost coins would be nice. [*]Maps still need a little more details. At the very least, box maps with two separated paths should be highlighted. [*]I wish the NPCs at the camp could offer guidance to where you should go. [/list] 中文小簡評 →一款向GBA年代致敬的獨立小品。 →不錯的復古風類銀河系惡魔城，運用徽章為弓箭附加效果進行探索，擊倒Boss獲得新徽章和欄位。 →藉由少量資訊鼓勵玩家多方嘗試徽章效果組合，如藤蔓+火可以讓你的箭爆炸(? →關卡與對應Boss設計有趣，地圖中有許多隱藏區域和道具。 →死亡直接掉金幣而且拿不回來，感覺有點糟。 →很不喜歡箱型地圖，尤其是一個箱型地圖裡有兩條完全不相通的路。 →希望營地的NPC可以稍微提示下個目標的地點。