Incremental games have to lay out breadcrumbs for progress and improvements. No matter how simple or addictive the initial gameplay loop is, if you force a player to rinse and repeat, they need to see progression. Combo Overload is an example of what happens when those breadcrumbs are not laid out and progress feels futile and soul-destroying. It isn’t all bad, but after 8 hours, I couldn’t continue and gave up for my own sanity.
Combo Overload places you as a shooting shape in the centre of the screen, unable to move horizontally. You can shoot bullets left or right as you move up and down in the central column and the enemies you kill leave currency behind for you to collect. In an initially cool idea, whilst you can shoot left and right, you also have to use a vacuum cleaner left and right to suck up the currency to keep it. The vacuum has a very short range initially, so for the first couple of hours, you’ll be thinking about not shooting enemies until they are close by, as otherwise you won’t be able to pick up your rewards. At a later point, a combo meter is introduced, and for the final third of the game, you break free from the central column and can move around the screen, making it feel like a totally different game.
The skill tree in Combo Overload is where you’ll spend a lot of your time and where you’ll wonder if it’s all worth the hassle. You can improve the damage, range, and movement speed of your bullets and vacuum, but the improvements are bearly perceptible. The incremental improvements start off at 0.01%, which is insane, and then later on the skill tree has a node to buy upgrades at 0.05% and then 0.10%. Unless you buy loads of these, you don’t see any difference, and this slog is made worse because half the time your currency can’t be collected as your vacuum is short-ranged and slow. It’s like every battle has sand slipping through your fingers, and it focuses your mind on the sand you’ve lost, not what you’ve gained. I grew more and more frustrated at the locked-in gameplay and the lack of progress.
Death in Combo Overload comes from enemies crossing from one side of the screen to the other. If they make it, it chips away at your health and cancels your combo meter. Levels are divided into time survival or reaching a combo goal. The very limited enemy selection ensures the player can’t use skill to outperform the tools provided, but when the player gains full movement control, that changes. Suddenly, Combo Overload becomes more of an arcade arena shooter, and it injects fresh interest into a game that’s sapped your patience. The problem here is that by this point, enemies are flying across the screen at pace, and you’ll have unlocked some actual weapon improvements, too. This makes for a busy screen and Combo Overload struggles to keep up. Screen slowdown and stuttering become the norm, and it dampens any joy that the new mode provides.
All of these issues would have been more tolerable if the game provided constant, visible progress. Instead, there’s nothing, and then a sudden cliff-edge change that comes too late to salvage what is a troubled experience. This is a case study in how the implementation of skill trees and upgrades can be misjudged to the detriment of the entire game. Be careful with your expectations with this one.
Review copy provided by the developer. Combo Overload is out now.
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