A review copy of “Space Overlords” was provided by Excalibur Publishing. The game was released on March 3, 2016 and can be found on Steam for $14.99 USD.

When I first saw screenshots of Space Overlords, I thought it was going to be some sort of strategy title. After all, to me, that’s kind of what the name implies. Yet, once I did a bit of research I saw it was basically a planetary-rampage romp of a game that looked like it was right out of the mid-to-late 1990s. The game comes to us from 12 Hit Combo and Excalibur Games, and it’s certainly a unique one, but how does it stack up after having dug into it for just over an hour?

Well, the game is sort of a mixed bag in my book. On the one hand, it has an interesting story about a group of powerful beings known as the Overlords that watched over the universe until one of them betrayed the others, sealed them away, created their own race of beings, and used them to colonize every planet they could find and drain the resources to feed her growing power. One such overlord awakens after countless eons of rest and endeavors to destroy these followers and free her brethren. Yet, all of this is ultimately a lot of fluff because the main gameplay sees you traveling to various planets and having to destroy everything on the surface within a set amount of time (400 seconds). In many ways, the goal seems to be to survive and reach some kind of threshold, because in a couple instances I failed to destroy one or two buildings and still managed to advance to the next area.

Each of the four selectable Overlords has their own strengths and weaknesses as well as special attacks they can deliver. The game also has multiplayer modes (not tested in my coverage) as well as a world-designer that you can use to build and share your own maps.

The graphics are definitely dated, giving me the vibe of Blast Corps on the Nintendo 64, and while that doesn’t count against my opinion on the game, I do find that it was rather unpolished. Typos can be found in various parts of the game, there are numerous instances of environmental clipping with the character models, and for a game about widespread destruction, the destruction seems rather tame and uninspired most of the time.

Ultimately, I think the game is okay, but for the asking price I’d likely stay away from it until it goes on a deep discount on Steam or you can get it as part of another bundle that has games you want in it.

Overall, this game gets a rating from me of:

“Meh”