Overbowed Steam Charts & Stats

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"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.

I am recommending this game because I had lots of fun, but honestly, it has a lot of problems. [h1]The good[/h1] - Art style is really nice. Every environment feels unique not only with a new color pallet, but also aesthetics. Also, I liked the small detail that every save room has a different tree. - It is a ranged metroidvania, which is not the most common, and it uses a bow, where its arrows suffer the effect of gravity. That makes it unique enough. Not only that, along the way you will find charms that will give you some nice synergy and combos. - I love when power ups in Metroidvanias have a use in both mobility and combat, and the devs here were able to make it happen to basically all of them. - There is one power-up that I think deserves a special mention because it is quite unique, which is hard when we take in account how many Metroidvanias exist nowadays. it is the [spoiler]bramble charm, which lets you interact with platforms in a very unique way[/spoiler]. If this game were longer, I believe it could have included some platforming challenges related to this power up. Maybe an additional [spoiler]charm[/spoiler] to extend its duration to make it possible. [h1]The bad[/h1] - One-way paths: That bothered me a lot. There are a bunch of paths that are one way, either because you are coming from an elevated place or simply because you are breaking a wall that can only be broken from one side, and when you re-enter the room, that wall will be blocked again. Totally unnecessary. - There is no fast travel. The world is not that big, so it is relatively easy to transverse it, but if you take in account the presence of one-way paths and the lack of [spoiler]double jump[/spoiler], it can make getting around quite boring. To be fair, technically there are 2 fast travel portals, but [spoiler]honestly, they are in such random places that I don't even know why they are there. In fact, two of them, the ones that connect the Main Entrance and the Furnace are relatively close[/spoiler]. - Lack of explanation of your powers: Most of your power-ups come in the form of charms that you attach to your bow. There are some synergies that are effective not only in combat but also as power-ups (as explained in the good points). Since they are not explained, it can happen that you don't know if you already have the tools to progress. One solution for that would be to lock you in a room where you can only escape if you figure this out, as this is a very traditional way to explain without using words. In fact, this game does that already, for example, when it gives you the [spoiler]bramble charm, where you have to use it immediately after to progress[/spoiler]. The game does alert you that charms have synergy, but it took me a while to figure out I could [spoiler]explode rocks with the bramble and the fire charms[/spoiler]. After that, I became paranoid always testing all my charms to see if I had what was needed to progress or not. - Some power-ups have very niche use, which feels more like a key than a power-up. For example, I was stuck in what I thought was the last boss final the game's final boss, and couldn't figure out how to open his door. Then I had to search on the forums and learned that I totally skipped a midgame boss [spoiler]in the Catacombs[/spoiler] and didn't even realize. That's because his power-up was kinda useless and only had a reason to exist to open the door of that last boss. Another reason I missed this boss is discussed below. - There are two parts in the game that were very hard for me to progress. One was that boss above, who is hidden behind a very hard to see tunnel. The other is the [spoiler]Pirate Ship[/spoiler], where for some reason there almost invisible platforms there to progress. I went to this area two or three times before I unintentionally jumped in the air and got "stuck", only to realize I had landed on those platforms. It makes no sense why those two areas are basically hidden, especially considering that they are essential for the progression of the game. - Unbalanced difficulty: This is alongside the lack of fast travel the biggest problem of this game. The game starts EXTREMELY hard, because you only have three lives and three arrows, your bow has a small delay before shooting, your arrows are affected by gravity, and there are flying enemies in the first rooms. If one of those flying enemies gets close to you, it basically means you are dead, as it is very hard to aim at them at such short distance. It was so hard that it was actually frustrating, and I died a lot at the beginning, even though I am quite experienced in 2D platformers. It didn't get much better until I got the [spoiler]fire charm, which increases your damage and therefore survivability[/spoiler], but soon after, after you get the [spoiler]triple shot charm[/spoiler], the game becomes extremely easy, as [spoiler]aiming is not such a big concern anymore[/spoiler]. The game only gets easier from there, as the other power-ups keep escalating your power. At the end, you can facetank most of the late game bosses, without even moving from your initial position, while the first 3 bosses are actual threats. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] The game is pretty fun and short, so even though it has a bunch of problems, the game is over before they really bother you. Therefore, I recommend it.

Really fun metroidvania. Starts out hard, gets much easier. Graphics and sound are very charming. Map sucks butt.

A short and unique metroidvania. The central gimmick is the charm system. You get a charm after killing each major boss and can combine them on the fly to improve your movement and combat abilities. The beginning is a bit rough, but it is worth it.

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.