[NewsPoster]

Are you a big fan of turn-based strategy games that lean heavily on tactical planing and well-thought-out dialog choices? Good, because we are too, which is why we're going to show you a little game that just came out of Steam Greenlight, a game called Overfall.

Upon opening the Overfall, the first thing we noticed was that the art style is a little peculiar. The in-game environments you encounter feature some incredible hand-painted locations, ranging from a somber, creepy, cultists' inner sanctum, to rollicking fields full of life and flowers, swaying in the breeze. The issue is that it's juxtaposed awkwardly against the bobble-headed characters that are reminiscent of a free-to-play mobile-app-quality game. It's not that the characters look terrible, but they do feel a little out of place against the environment. Fortunately, the music and sound of the game is wonderfully cinematic, always changing to fit the theme of the location, as well as whatever happens to your characters.

The actual story of the game feels pretty secondary, as though it was tossed in to give a little background as to why your characters are embarking on the journey, rather than having any deep, meaningful point to get across. The short version is that you have been ripped through a time rift and unceremoniously dropped back into the world you once knew, but this time it's a couple of centuries later. You find out that the Everking has gone missing, so now it's your duty to figure out what happened to him. You're given a ship, and basically pushed out into the ocean to go solve the mystery of what happened by whatever means necessary. The goal? Find the king before your enemies do. With that understood, there's not much left to do besides hop on your ship, sail to some islands, and get to befriending folks and beheading others.

Aesthetics aside, there's a surprising amount to the actual game itself. When you first shove off to sea, your intentions are to go around and befriend the races in hopes that one of them will be able to direct you toward the Everking. The game is one part diplomacy-based RPG, and one part "beat the snot out of people" hex-grid tactical strategy game, with just enough hide-and-seek additions to keep it interesting. You'll only be able to find the Everking if you manage to befriend a race (be it dwarves, elves, humans, etc) who can help you on your journey. A quick tip for new players: pick your ally race quickly, as you can lose too much time trying to befriend too many races at once.

Dialogue between your characters and NPCs is a critical part of this game, which we found a little surprising, considering the plot didn't really stick with us. As you interact with characters, you'll be able to select what sort of response you want to give them, which can greatly change the outcome of the encounter, and thus the game that follows. If you've got a character of a specific class, occasionally you'll get to use a class-based response. For example, in our last game, we were able to have our cleric heal an injured elven woman, which helped gain bonus reputation with the elves. The dialogue in the game isn't just fluff, though; it is capable of genuine moments of witty humor as well as grave seriousness, though it's delivered in the most concise way possible.

Combat is done in three sequential phases on a hex-grid. Each character is allowed to complete three phases before another is allowed to begin theirs. The first phase is the movement phase, which allows you to move your character where you would like them to go on the grid, either to get them out of harm's way (for characters like the cleric) or to get them in range of the enemies (for melee-heavy characters, like the warrior.) The second phase is the buff-and-debuff phase, the phase that allows you to start a little bit of crowd control. Here, your characters can apply buffs like aegis to allies, or debuffs like disarm or paralyze to enemies. On hard mode, this phase seems to make or break encounters, almost more so than the attack phase.

The attack phase is pretty straightforward, and allows your characters to attack an enemy with whatever class-specific abilities they have. We've got another tip for new players: some abilities (across all phases) have cool-down timers, so it's worth waiting to use them until the most opportune moment, lest you blow your heavy-hitting move on a guy who would have fallen to a basic, "whack him with an axe" move. Out of all of the games many, many facets, we were actually most impressed by how well the battles themselves played out.

When it really comes down to it, we were surprised by how much we enjoyed our time with Overfall. Sure, the art style clashes with itself a little, but it's not enough of a detractor for us to quit playing the game. If you're interested in jumping in for yourself, you can get Overfall from Steam for OS X, Windows, and SteamOS/Linux, for just under $14.

Who should set sail with Overfall:
If you like your turn-based strategy games with an extra helping of RPG in them, this is a solid game to take up.

Who should wave goodbye to Overfall from the docks:
If you're looking for a fast game with lots of action from start to finish, this game's pace might not suit your needs.

-- Amber Neely (@SurferAmber)

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