Finji is a new company that was founded by Rebekah and Adam Saltsman (creator of Canabalt) and among its first titles is a turn-based tactical journey across a ravaged America. It’s called Overland and it’s looking promising, both visually and conceptually.
Speaking to Pocket Tactics, Saltsman revealed that the idea for Overland started with a question: “what if you took XCOM and made into something cozier?” He wants to make a game that’s as compelling as a tactical RPG (or maybe something closer to FTL: Faster Than Light) but without all of the screen clutter, stats, and spreadsheets that may put people off.
Instead, Overland will be sleeker, focusing on clean discrete states – the example he gave was how HP is handled: there are no numbers, instead a character is either OK, almost dead, or dead.
Overland is set in alternate timeline in which something when wrong with the Earth in the 1970s, plunging it into an irreversible downturn – basically, the apocalypse, it would seem. Your mission is to guide a group of survivors from the east to the west of America.
All we know for now is that at least some parts of the journey will take place on grid-based dioramas. You’ll have to make plenty of choices in each of these that will affect the members of your party, whether it’s as simple as an evasive maneuver or engaging in combat.
Overland will be coming to PC and mobile this summer with other platforms yet to be announced. Keep an eye out on its website for more details.
