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Turbo Overkill is the textbook definition of an indie game that’s been polished to a reflective shine. Its detailed, neon-drenched cyberpunk city is a gorgeous setting and its OST is packed with tracks that anyone could mosh to. But, even amongst numerous similarly polished indie games at PAX East, Turbo Overkill managed to stand by being stupidly badass and ridiculously fast.
Turbo Overkill was originally announced in September 2021 and had a prominent spot in the Steam Next Fest. It launched in early access on April 22, but for anyone who hasn’t played the game yet, it’s a first-person shooter that lives up to its name by pushing everything, including player speed, up to 11. Your character is a stereotypically dark, brooding man who smokes cigars, twirls around his pistols, and has a chainsaw for a leg. That’s the ridiculous energy of Turbo Overkill and it doesn’t let up throughout any of its levels.
At the same time, Turbo Overkill doesn’t feel like a radically new game. Its DNA is a mix of staple old-school shooters such as DOOM and Wolfenstein, but with some solid improvements. Each of the game’s weapons comes with a primary fire mode and a more destructive alt-fire mode, for instance. Using the alt-fire for the dual pistols lets players mark three targets to be blown up, all while the main character twirls another pistol in his off hand. Each level also offers a number of movement options that vary combat just a bit more. When I was fighting in the game’s wide-open areas, I would dance around enemies with a double jump and two dashes, all while spraying them with bullets from above.
The design decision to have everything in Turbo Overkill be over-the-top badass was one of the most important, according to the game’s developer, Sam Preble. The “mostly solo” developer for Turbo Overkill, as he describes his position, didn’t want a single moment in the game to not feel like it was ripped out of a cross between every ’80s action flick and genre-defining retro shooters.
“I had a philosophy really early on of ‘If it’s not badass, it doesn’t go in the game.’ I love prototyping stuff so there are so many mechanics that have gone through Turbo, but mostly I love experimenting.”
More than anything though, when Sam was making Turbo Overkill he wasn’t thinking about other people. “I mostly made it because it’s the kind of game I want to play. Some games just feel too slow for me, so I just figured I’ll crank the speed up to ridiculous amounts. Yeah, it’s just been my dream game really.”
The end result of Sam’s experimenting and excessive need for speed is a first-person shooter that simply doesn’t take its foot off the gas. Levels in Turbo Overkill are like levels in any other retro shooter, but faster and larger. Cybernetically disfigured enemies swarm the player, begging to be blasted away or turned to mincemeat with a single chainsaw-driven slide across the ground.
Players can also upgrade their character’s various augments, making them even faster or adding new ways to kill enemies. A wall jump effectively lets them jump four times while another upgrade creates small explosions whenever the player lands after falling from a large height. Everything in Turbo Overkill can be made lethal, presenting the terrifying problem/thrilling prospect of having too many ways to kill enemies.
That kind of good problem will probably get worse as time goes on. Early access for the game only gives players access to its first episode. Two more episodes are set to release before the end of the year, with the third marking the game’s full launch.
