With the festive season upon us, I wanted to bring you a quick round up of what's been going on and what to expect in 2019.
It's been a big year for Overcrowd. Myself and Sarah, who draws the game, have made good progress, and some really enouraging words have been written about it from some of the top gaming press who had a chance to play it.
We showed an early build off for the first time at EGX Rezzed in April. Kotaku had a play and picked us as one of 8 Standout Indie Games from EGX Rezzed, calling the experience "hugely satisfying".
Later in the Summer, PC Gamer listed us one of 12 cool-looking indie games in development right now, describing Overcrowd as a "quirky-looking 'tactical management sim' ... blends base-building, pausable real-time strategy, and spatial puzzling."
Following that we were fortunate enough to land a full page preview in the magazine proper, where author Andy Kelly wrote, among other things: “There are a lot of interesting ideas in Overcrowd and I hope SquarePlay manages to bring it all together.” You can read more about that in my post here.
In October I announced my target release of Spring 2019. That's still a few months away, but before then I'll be showing you more of what's in store, including some greatly improved commuter animations, and new features like vertical lift shafts, capacitors, hot dog stands, vending machines, more shops, a functioning economy, a procedural and highly replayable campaign, arcade machines, tea machines, benches, fountains, tasers and, of course, escalators. There's more.
Recently I have been focusing on adding these items, reworking walk, action and idle cycles, expanding on a fully customisable sandbox mode, and iterating on how staff act in the staff room by allowing them to wander between amenities, sit down, drink, and gain temporary buffs from caffeinated beverages like us all.
You can see some of our new commuter style in the seasonal Gif we made below. In the meantime if you have any questions, drop by the Overcrowd Discord server or follow us on Twitter.
From myself and Sarah, Merry Christmas!
