Turbo Overkill is the textbook definition of an indie game that has been polished to a reflective sheen. His detailed, neon-drenched cyberpunk city is a magnificent setting and his OST is packed with tracks anyone could listen to. But, even among numerous similarly polished indie games at PAX East, Turbo Overkill managed to hold its own by being stupidly badass and ridiculously fast.
Turbo Overkill was originally announced in September 2021 and featured prominently at Steam Next Fest. It launched in early access on April 22, but for anyone who hasn’t played the game yet, it’s a first-person shooter that lives up to its name by boosting everything, including player speed, up to 11. Your Character it’s a stereotype. dark, brooding man who smokes cigars, spins around his guns, and has a chainsaw for a leg. That’s the ridiculous energy of Turbo Overkill and it doesn’t let up at any of its levels.
At the same time, Turbo Overkill doesn’t feel like a radical new game. Its DNA is a mix of old-school shooters like DOOM and Wolfenstein, but with some solid improvements. Each of the weapons in the game comes with a primary fire mode and a more destructive alternative fire mode, for example. The use of alternate fire for dual pistols allows players to mark three targets to blow up, all while the main character spins another pistol in his free hand. Each level also offers a number of movement options that vary the combat a bit more. When he was fighting in the open areas of the game, he would dance around enemies with a double jump and two dashes, all while spraying them with bullets from above.
The design decision to make everything in Turbo Overkill overly badass was one of the biggest, according to game developer Sam Preble. Turbo Overkill’s “mostly solo” developer, as he describes his position, didn’t want a single moment in the game to feel like it wasn’t ripped from a crossover between all the ’80s action movies and the retro shooters they define. the gender.
“He had a philosophy from the beginning of ‘If he ain’t tough, he ain’t in the game.’ I love prototyping, so there are a lot of mechanics that have gone through Turbo, but most of all I love to experiment.”
More than anything though, when Sam was doing Turbo Overkill he wasn’t thinking about other people. “I did it mainly because it’s the kind of game I want to play. Some games seem too slow for me, so I thought I’d increase the speed to ridiculous amounts. Yeah, it really has been the game of my dreams.”
The end result of Sam’s experimentation and excessive need for speed is a first-person shooter that just won’t take its foot off the gas. The levels in Turbo Overkill are just like any other retro shooter, only faster and bigger. Cybernetically disfigured enemies swarm the player, begging to be destroyed or chopped into pieces with a single chainsaw-powered swipe across the ground.
Players can also upgrade their character’s various augments, making them even faster or adding new ways to kill enemies. A wall jump allows them to jump four times, while another upgrade creates small explosions every time the player lands after falling from a great height. Everything in Turbo Overkill can turn lethal, presenting the scary problem/exciting prospect of having too many ways to kill enemies.
That kind of good problem will probably get worse over time. Early access to the game only gives players access to its first episode. Two more episodes will be released before the end of the year, with the third one marking the full release of the game.
GameSpot may earn a commission from retail offers.