As the end of 2024 is approaching, it's been a tradition to write a short wrap-up of what has happened in Overhead Games.

ePic Character Generator Sale

But first thing first, I want to say thank you to all of you who havebeen part of ePic Character Generator'sjourney in 2024, marking 10 years ofgenerating awesome character images together. We wouldn't be anywhere without you. To celebrate this year's holiday season, we are offering all packs and bundles at 50% off between 19 December and 2 January, so make sure to take advantage of this deal while it lasts! https://store.steampowered.com/app/408930

Temporal Shore progress

This year started strongly with lots of work put into Temporal Shore. While we had most design decisions figured out by the end of last year, we still had a good amount of discussion going on. By spring, we managed to implement a new layout and reshoot the trailer & screenshots so we could update thestore page of the game, to better reflect the directions we were heading. To do this, we chose to create a story trailer with a voiceover, that helps to better understand the context of what's visible on the screen. Some prominent improvements in design were:

• While characters have already been personalities with names and specific abilities, we took this one step further, and introduced a "performing system". This means that each character has a set number of action points each turn, and whenever an action card is played, some or all of the characters who have available action points will perform this action. This brings the mechanicsof playing cards even closer to survival games, where you have to perform various actions with your characters. The character you choose to act has a major effect on how some actions play out. In some cases, there can be a bonus on production, in other times, you can discover cards only available when playing certain cards with certain characters,etc. If the cards have some negative consequences, like characters losing morale, it's also important to use the ones you are happy taking a hit.
• Characters also have different gear slots where they can equip various items, and receive permanent changes to their stats and abilities.
• We wanted to make buildings more than just plain resource productions, so we introduced chain reactions. This mechanic allows us to build long sequences that can be triggered by playing a single action, and have different buildings, characters, or monsters react to it, transforming the gained resources into new ones, or triggering neweffects on the playfield.
• While the game is, at its core, focused on managing resources, we wanted to make this resource gathering and production as exciting as possible, while also keeping the simplicity of card games. To achieve this, we came up with the idea of using resource subtypes, meaning you can produce either lumber or stone, for example, but they will be stored and can be used under the collective name of materials. This simplifies the amount of resource types you need to keep track of, while at the same type, also allowing us to create unique characteristics to each different resource type, making them different to play, and profit from different play styles and synergies. At this time, I won't go into too much depth, but as we progress, I'll be explaining more of this system in a later post, because I believe this will be very exciting to interact with.

Building an engine

While making Temporal Shore, I'm not just making a game. I'm trying to separate game-specific & universal code as much as possible, essentially creating a card engine, that can be used later for any other games that resemble cards & decks. While not strictly limited to card games (meaning it can be used for anything that relies on entities and containers), different types of deck buildersare in the focus right now. Because I need to engineer this framework carefully and can't just throw everything into a giant bowl of code spaghetti (the way most games are made), it takes some extra time and planning to organize and implement everything in its place so most of the stuff will be reusable later, however, this extra effort start paying off because it's now super quick to put together complex ideas in a short time.

GMTK Game Jam

The first bigtest of the engine was in August when the yearly GMTK Game Jam happened. While we missed it last year, we wanted to participate this year and planned on making a card game in the short, 2-day period. However, when the theme "Built to scale" was revealed, we knew we didn't have an easy task, as it heavily favored games that played with funky physics or resizing objects - something we couldn't really do in a card game. While we kept bouncing ideas, essentially we settled on taking the theme literally and decided to make a deckbuilder about balancing a Scale. [previewyoutube=iIbTPpfvZBQ;full][/previewyoutube]

Balanced

So we made the first version of Balanced in 2 days. The idea was to create a cozy math game where you place number cards on either side of the scale and keep it balanced for as long as you can. In the jam version, points were awarded at the end of each turn, depending on the imbalance between the two sides, as well as how many cards players had in their hands. You can check out the jam version here: https://overheadgames.itch.io/balanced As the initial reception during the jam wasn't bad at all, we decided to take it a step further and spend 3 more weeks polishing the idea, fixing up design issues, implementing missing menu screens, and then releasing a demo on Steam. At this point, it was meant to be a short, experimental project, and we learned a lot from the process, while also finding some players who enjoyed the game as it is. While it's far from its final form, it's still great to have something playable out there after a few years of not releasing new games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/689760/Balanced/

Temporal Shore new art style

After taking a short break with Balanced, we returned to working on Temporal Shore and finally pot together all the pieces to update the visual style of the game. As you know, the initial concept was visualized with AI, but we are firm believers that games are better when they are hand-crafted, so we took a lot of time to find a suitable art style that both works well with the idea and overall direction of the game, as well as being efficient to make in the scale we need to make it. Now that we got the style figured out, and all the cards and elements were drawn that we wanted to showcase at first, we were able to create a new logo, recapture the retailer,and take the new screenshots currently visible on the store page. We hope you like it! Currently, we are in the process of implementing and testing all the card ideas we've previously collected (400+ cards so far), and then it comes to testing various interactions, mechanics, and systems, so they aren't just a bunch of cards next to each other, but together, create a fun and exciting experience. If you made it this far you are a true champion! I appreciate taking the time to read this year's wrap-up. We wish you a very happy holiday season, with many joyful gaming hours next year!

[ 2024-12-19 21:00:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, Wed like to introduce our new game to you.
Balanced is a cozy deckbuilder about balancing the forces of nature: sit back, relax, and enjoy this zen game of life and harmony. How long can you keep the scale Balanced? To get a quick glimpse of what the game is about, watch the announcement trailer below. [previewyoutube=zstvBr5oUA4;full][/previewyoutube] While the game is still in development, you can already play the demo on Steam right now! We understand that the game won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if you are into cozy, relaxing math games, wed love to hear how you liked it! https://store.steampowered.com/app/689760/Balanced

[ 2024-10-18 14:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello lovely people! it's been a year since we announced our new game, Temporal Shore (we know, time flies!). After hitting this milestone we felt it was needed to polish up our Steam page a bit and showcase all the new systems and mechanics we've added to the game during this period. Once we were at it, we thought hard to figure out what would be the best way to present the direction the game is heading in our new trailer. Since we have a lot of depth in our gameplay, simply showing cards might not cut it - so we opted for a story trailer, where one of our characters got a voice, and walked us all through her journey on the island! We hope you like the new trailer, and if you do, please add the game to your wishlist so you get notified of future updates! We'll be back with more exciting news soon. [previewyoutube=gNE2e4fDcD4;full]https://youtu.be/gNE2e4fDcD4[/previewyoutube]

[ 2024-03-11 21:51:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

As we approach the new year, it's a tradition to write my Yearly Wrapup, and see what I spent (most) of my time with! I came up with the initial concept of Temporal Shore in February while participating in a game jam, and quickly saw the game could provide an interesting twist to a well-known mechanic, resulting in a fun game. I also shared the prototype with a few players and they all enjoyed playing it, so I decided to dedicate more time to turn it into a proper game. Since the initial prototype was made in full in 6 days, the first challenge was to figure out how to make the game interesting for more than one playthrough. Players needed around 15-20 minutes to win the game, and once that was achieved, there was no real incentive to playit again. Of course, there were new cards, events, and playstyles that allowed for some replayability, but clearly,it wasn't enough. So I started looking at adding depth to the game. As a result of this process, a lot of mechanics were added or reworked, resulting in a diverse and interesting experience each time someone plays it. My goal is to provide a similar experience to strategy games, where players can pick the same faction, and same map, but still have very different experiences from session to session, all boiled down to seemingly simple, but underneath complex card-game mechanics. When asking what are the most exciting bits of the game, I always came to the same conclusion: exploration. While the initial prototype only tested the idea of resource management and basic interactions with events - in most cases, resulting in either a gain or loss of resources -, exploring the unknown of the island, discovering long abandoned establishments, stumbling upon sacred relics, or even finding traces of another life-form is what would keep me playing. Finding the right way to present exploration in a card game is no easy task. I spent around 4 months exploring different ideas, including a node-based map, as shown on the Steam page screenshot and gif, as well as a full 3D hex tile map, with a procedural, and explorable world, that also allowed for more complex building management. While it initially seemed promising, after spending a good amount of time in that direction, it became clear that it didn't have the factor I was looking for. So it was time to reevaluate, which direction the game should be heading. Is it goingto be a hex-based 4X with cards, or rather a digital board game, that captures the essence of tabletop games, lets the players immerse themselves into the world and its challenges, but does not do so by displaying a fancy, fully modeled 3D environment, and relies more on traditional ways of storytelling? Once I got this main question answered it was time to look at the various mechanics the game will have to support this idea.

• Resource management will still be a core part of the game, but it's accompanied by constructing buildings, that can either produce passively each turn or give various bonuses.
• Exploration will be played with many exciting locations. After Scouting, we can find resource deposits,or some landmarklocations worth planning an expedition to. Exploring these locations will play out in short illustrated descriptions and picking choices.
• Characters are all named and unique, with strong abilities, and depending on which characters are in the team, different playstyles will be more viable. They also have backstories and personal preferences when working with one another or performing various activities.
• Events have been completely reworked. While originally, they had a countdown until they were resolved, and fulfilling their resource requirements simply avoided the bad consequences, now they are fully alive, and are the main drivers of the story.
• The type of events we will encounter fully depends on our play style. If we hunt a lot of wild animals to get food, we can expect an increasing number of wild animal attacks that we have to successfully fight back to avoid Disaster cards shuffled into our deck. If they are left unresolved, they can have devastating consequences. Nature is just one of the many elements that need careful balancing.
• The island is full of treasures, rare artifacts, andmagical places, thatcan makeourteam and settlement stronger. Since there's no such thing as too many bonuses, these powerful Perks can also influence what direction we should be building our decks toward.
• Research will remain very similar to the initial idea, but will open up as a shop, displaying various new technology cards we can purchase for Knowledge.
• The weather on the island can also be harsh, but we can also turn it to our benefit, with many buildings, character abilities, actions, and perks. Weather can also influence Exploration in a major way, for example, we can't explore the basement of the abandoned factory when it rains and it's full of water!

And of course, the time loop! We are also making it much more impactful, giving unique perks, special currency, and lots of other goodies. I'm not going to spoil everything here. :) The whole story in the game is interconnected. What we do in one session can have consequences in another, unlocking new paths, and closing others, allowing us to better understand the island and its surrounding lore. Last, but not least, Temporal Shore recently crossed the 1000 wishlist mark, so a colossal thank you to everyone who found the game interesting even in its current form! We know that what we have shown on the Store page via descriptions, screenshots, and the trailer is a really, really tiny bit of the full game, and we can't wait to show more of it, and more importantly, release a demo so you can all experience it for yourselves! We still have a lot of work to do, but we are committed to delivering a truly unique experience for you all!

[ 2023-12-20 20:56:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hold onto your hats, survival fans! We've just dropped a brand-new gameplay trailer that's going to blow your mind! It's been a few days since we made the Steam page public, and we've been chomping at the bit to give you a sneak peek of what's in store. The trailer is packed with excitement that is sure to get your heart racing, and we're confident that you're going to love what you see. [previewyoutube=yNaE58cCGoY;full][/previewyoutube] So what are you waiting for? If you think you have what it takes to lead your team to survival on a mysterious island full of danger and adventure, wishlist the game today!

[ 2023-03-04 09:35:15 CET ] [ Original post ]