If you love comfortable games and clean up the chaos with a taste of nature, your boat (or rather, tugboat) is here. overflow! Launch on PC today (Steam) is an environmentally conscious game designed to absorb oil and garbage into the river to keep the original nature behind and soothe the time in a vibrant pixelated art style.
sprinkle! It was Lente Cuenen's first game, a game developer in the Netherlands, who programmed it from home – a boat on the country's waterways, she was equipped with solar panels and electric motors, as well as Starlink Internet to work and play games online. When her family grew up, she named it Zusje V, or “Sister Five” in Dutch.
“As a kid, there was a lot of garbage in the water.” It makes sense that her love for nature and ships would become her game.
Just like the retail stores before the “Reverse City Builder”, it's easy to see the environmental basis of the overflow mechanism! The water is clear and shows abundant vegetation and fish below; clean large enough fauna like dolphins will swim next to your container.
Cuenen includes the eco-theme at the start of the game and hopes it has an inspiring message, but she first focuses on making it a fun game. “I think it's more beneficial to have an interesting game than the fun game that many people play than the ones with big messages,” she said.
sprinkle! The day of presenting developers at the game developer conference in March 2025.
Overflowing gameplay! It is a relaxing loop that fills the boat with trash and oil and then converts it into a floating collection barge, which gives you further tools to explore other areas that need to be cleaned. Collection, upgrade, progress, repeat. All in all, it's not a long game – you can finish it in an hour – but like many comfortable games, repeatedly obsessed with the atmosphere is the focus, not the finish.
“There is a man [in the Spilled! Discord] Occasionally jump in and show him on the overflowing game time! And he's been 80 hours now. I don't know how he did it. ” Kuning said.
sprinkle! Run new tools through different biomes to clean up contamination. While oil barrels and plastic bottles burn on the waterway, players may notice a large number of wind turbines and solar panels on the riverbank hills and houses. This is proof of Cuenen's cleverly built-in “Solarpunk” setting in the game. This minimalist story shows that in the age of oil and factories, the world of the game was not always so green, so it depends on the player’s need to restore the waters – this is the power fantasy of the Earth.
“It's like a futuristic world where we're still embracing technology, but for better careers and greener,” Kooning said.
sprinkle! Available for PC (Steam) starting March 26, 2025.
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