In action game Overwhelm, players don’t gain new powers upon defeating bosses. Flipping the Mega Man formula on its head, the enemies all receive boss powers once powerful creatures are defeated, making its world even more dangerous with every major foe players take out.
Overwhelm draws from horror games, looking to create a tense environment where vision is limited and enemies can come darting out of anywhere. This also applies to the challenging play, as players can only take a single hit before dying, and only have three lives to use to complete the game with.
As players explore this monster-filled hive, using their guns to cut down the creatures that rush after them, they’ll have to deal with five powerful bosses that possess unique abilities. These special abilities will be passed onto the monsters of the world once a boss is taken out, adding five special attacks and movements to the enemies of the world to create an escalating difficulty. Players can choose to find and beat these creatures in whichever order they choose, though, which gives them some control over how and when enemies gain certain abilities. It is only through careful route planning that most players will survive.
Overwhelm is available now on Steam and Itch.io.
