Topic: Overload DLC release!

[D2Disciple]

I'm a few days late on this, so my apologies, everyone! 

As of September 28, 2018, the first community-contributed DLC for Overload is released to Steam for your itching trigger fingers to get a hold of! For the price of a typical grease-pit cheeseburger ($4.99), you get a nine-mission campaign and twelve new Challenge Mode levels to sink your teeth into. Plus, half the sales go to the contributing level authors, so you're directly supporting the Overload community by purchasing. How cool is that?

Get it on Steam here!

Plus, special shoutout to our very own Kaiaatzl for contributing two devious and well-designed levels to the campaign! Congrats, shut up, and take my money! 

[D2Disciple]

My thoughts:

Played through the campaign today, and a player can easily breeze through it in an afternoon (2-3 hours). The first level is pretty underwhelming and introduces a rather jarring difficulty spike right out of the gate that the rest of the game never quite matches, and the next few levels are equally short and simplistic. However, while there are a few good ideas sporadically used throughout the middle of the campaign, it's Kaiaatzl's two levels that really shine (and I'm not just saying that because he's a core part of our community). His talents must be recognized by Revival, as well, who placed both of his levels at the end of the campaign. They're lengthy, they're challenging, and they're deviously designed, with lots of great switch- and reactor-based puzzles and some really clever level-design twists that frequently played off of my expectations and genuinely surprised me. If you buy the DLC, buy it for these two levels.

I still feel like there's a lot of untapped potential for some of Overload's gameplay mechanics - particularly in the form of the accelerator tubes, the teleporters, and even the escape sequence itself. On that last mechanic, one of Kaiaatzl's levels manages to be a bit more challenging than usual, but I'd still like to see some really tough escape routes utilized in the future (Gytowt station from D2, anyone?). I'm hoping to see some DLC in the future that uses some of Overload's underused ideas in more meaningful and challenging ways.

I've played a few of the DLC Challenge Mode levels, and probably because of the nature of CM in general, I didn't feel like they did much that the existing CM maps didn't already do from a strategic standpoint. That said, Stone Burner is a standout, with its wide-open 3D space offset by numerous pillars, piping, and other obstacles, leading to some really intense and fast-paced action with some unique tactical opportunities. Still, it's a nice addition, and I'm certainly not one to complain for the price. 

Overall, if you're a fan of Descent and Overload (and of course you are, because why else would you be reading this?), I wholeheartedly recommend this DLC. Here's hoping there's more where this came from. 

[PyroJockey]

Thanks for the link. It's puzzling though, a search for "Overload" on the Steam store does not return the DLC page. Also I saw no notification on the official Revival site. Where/how did you first learn of it?

[D2Disciple]

There was a massive update to the game that downloaded, so I checked the news page on Steam. That's where I saw the release notes and the DLC, so I went the store page and it was included in the DLC section. 

[Kaiaatzl]

Glad you like my work.
Don't go thinking you've seen the last of me.   Once they get custom music sorted out I'll be all over this thing.

I do want to eventually build something with a bigger and better escape path.  Those final two levels were really me feeling out the editor's workflow and its capabilities -- needless to say I like what I found... although... there are a couple visual mistakes you can find especially in Nyx, if you look in the right wrong places.
Absolutely loved the ability to set a time delay on a trigger or script.