Overthrown | PC Preview

Overthrown, developed by Brimstone and published by Maximum Entertainment, is a city builder with a twist: rather than the god view typically used by other such games like Cities Skylines, you play in a third-person action viewpoint as a ruler who runs around the world developing your ideal town and defending it from bandits. The other major twist is your character is super fast, super strong, can carry and throw literally anything in the world, and is generally an example of “you got anime in my city builder!”

The gameplay loop at this stage of the game’s development (it’s still in early access as of this writing) is pretty simple: you put up buildings, including a town hall, houses, grainary, and so on, and people come live in your town. You unlock new buildings and features through research, build up your town and make it able to defend against bandit attacks and starvation during winter. It’s very basic and not very fleshed out, at least not yet. Your citizens have various needs (shelter, food, entertainment, employment) and you build things like breweries and guard towers to provide those things, but it’s very simple, very quick to accomplish.

As a final note, the action gameplay doesn’t exactly mesh super well with the city building aspects as of the current build. City building tends to be a more considered and mindful affair, compared to the very chaotic action-oriented movement and combat. It remains to be seen whether the city-building will take a backseat to actively defending and expanding your territory, or if you’ll spend more time arranging buildings and throwing your citizens into space.

To hear me talk more about Overthrown, be sure to listen to the December 12th, 2024 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 1:29:15 time stamp.