Version 1.03.2
A 2D RPG survival horror game where you play as Juno, an engineer trying to survive after a zombie apocalypse and trying to uncover the mystery of the origin of the virus that infected the world. A pretty basic horror story that doesn't try to derail off the main path, but at least conveys its themes well and its characters are written correctly. It's a bit of shame that they don't take many risks with their scenario, but at least it means they could focus on a more solid experience, instead of tackling ideas they may not master at all.
The game is surprisingly long, but it never feels like it overstays its welcome at any point. You only have max. 2 or 3 missions in each level, most of them optional, and you can move on at anytime to te next level if you feel like it. There's also multiple endings, which I honestly did not expect coming in, but it was easy on my first playthrough to get the best ending and see all the content I couldn't have unlocked as I didn't stop at each encounter.
The gameplay is alright, although it is very easy to get permanently softlocked in certain sections of the game if you don't manage your resources correctly. Resources in this game are all finite, including ammos and weapons, so combats against groups of enemies end up feeling like trial and error, where you take multiple attempts to route out the best path across a level and then use some of your bullets on very specific enemis in a group to not get overwhelmed too quickly.
You can also take some hits to preserve ammo but honestly, the game doesn't do that much of a good job at making you care about resources management outside of ammos. You have stats like hunger and infection to monitor, but wile the resources are finite, they are plenty enough early enough that you will never get the bad effects of neglecting your character. It doesn't help that soon after the 2/3rds or the game, the game auto manages your stats for you, so you can just rush through enemies and not care about being infectedd or whatever. So the meter and resources management in this game needs some work. You can see the improvements in their next game, Claire's Quest, where the meters start getting more problematic ver early on, but for Overgrown, it feels more like an afterthought.
One thing that I really disliked in this game however, is the fact that you fight enemies directly in the levels rather than in the dedicated, built-in RPGMaker fight scene. While this allows for more engaging fights, it also means that you often have to deal with RPGM's jankyness when it comes to movement and actually gauging then distance that separates you from the enemies, as some of their sprites take more than one tile. It's not that much of a problem, but I wish more devs would realize than RPGM is not suited at all for real-time combats at all. This was espcecially true in the dryad boss fight at the hotel, where I almost emptied all my weapons as you can miss enemies by shooting between them when you actually think their hitboxes are bigger than they really are.
The artstyle is really great, with classic 2D pixels for the overworld and character icons during dialogues, and fully hand-drawn 2D CGs for the sex scenes, which I honestly I really dig in as the style is really unique, uncensored and covers many of the fetishes I have. So a big plus in my book.
Overall, I really recommend this game, although I think many aspects could be improved a lot, like the resources and meter management mechanics you don't interact enough with. It's a very good game, but not a great game to the point that I would replay it past the best ending, or could call a classic in the adult game genre. Still, it would be hypocritical to spit on what the devs gave us, and I hope they build upon what they created in the future.