Infinite Revolution: Overdrive is where mecha meets magical girl

The first thing that struck me about Infinite Revolution: Overdrive is the vibrance: bold, neon streaks of yellow, red and blue plastered across its pages — a prismatic sight in pitch black space. Turns out this impression sets up the central concept of Overdrive succinctly: it’s a game about galactic heroes fighting alien predators that swallow stars. Gwen C, the mind behind Darling Thresher Games, summed Overdrive up as “white-knuckle exosuit dogfights in the black of space”. “[It’s about] finding moments of joy and rest in the gutter-cracks of a war, and burning your character's future for the power to save the world(s) from the crushing grip of entropy right now,” she told Rascal in an email.

‘Right now’ is clearly the operative phase here, given Overdrive’s focus on speed and immediacy. It’s all about speed — there’s no maps or battle grids to chart the player’s position. Every character in the game is assigned a number between 0 to 10, which represents how quickly they’re moving in relation to everyone else. As they navigate the space and attack one another, this speed changes, with certain weapons and powers only hitting characters who are whizzing about at specific speeds. “[Their speed] goes down when they get hit. Reach 0 speed, and you're out of the fight! Revolvers are more or less physically invulnerable, but your enemies don't care about killing you, they just want you drifting out of their way so they can get at the vulnerable ships, stations, or planets you're protecting,” she said.