Overthrown

Chuck it. 

I'll admit, Brimstone Games’ Overthrown had me interested based on its well put together trailer, showcasing the wealth of combat and building options in this open world sandbox co-op city builder. That mouthful aside, a lack of direction and tutorials builds more frustration than much else. 

Plunked down as a monarch in the wilds, you are tasked with rebuilding your kingdom. You'll do this by building infrastructure and commerce, farms, and homesteads to serve your people, keeping them happy, and of course, paying your military to keep your newly invested town safe. Well, when you need them anyway. 

However, getting your town up and running and flourishing to the point where you can relabel it as a city comes with a lot of investment through trial and error, as the game does little to guide you. In fact, much of my progress was due to following guides on YouTube from the game's early access players. This is a huge problem. If any of the few tutorials, or a built-in accessible guide was present, then many of my criticisms would be dealt with.

When you begin, you'll be plopped down into an empty field in whatever size map you choose. You are told to take hold of your crown to become the monarch. You are first tasked with constructing a town hall, then onto townhouses to gain subjects, a few pieces of infrastructure (ei: logging, simple food production), then after, you are only asked to grow the population and research more technology, agriculture and town defenses. Past that, you are solely left to figure out what to do next and how to utilize your new knowledge without any journals or writeups on how to use anything. I do love puzzling through a few things and building to my preferences and advantages, but with little to often no instructions on what to do or how to use anything, I've often spent the first few hours floundering through things with many reloads to redo something I discovered I wasn't using properly or at all. 

Present across the map are set locations for certain resources, such as mining ore. Your employed workers then haul ass to those locations to make themselves useful. However, the AI pathing is atrocious, as they will run right into enemies and get themselves killed. This has you constantly babysitting them, killing the enemies, and doing it all over again when they respawn.

City building has often been a genre where you're essentially in God mode, placing down buildings from the sky, and managing your resources to invest and accommodate what your city needs. However, Overthrown refreshingly places you on the ground as a character that has the mobility of Sonic the Hedgehog with the jumping and combat more akin to The Legend of Zelda. And, from a city building aspect, you're tending to your needs in ways typical of most farming games. 

However, where Overthrown differs is that you can pick up and throw anything, hence the name. From enemies, to buildings, to other players, you can throw it. Need trees for your lumber mill? Chuck trees into it. Not good enough for you? Chuck the lumber mill into the same trees. Same result. It's an odd, yet very satisfying feature that truly separates this game from others in the genre.

There is a lot to like here, especially from the game's charming visuals, a cartoony approach we've seen indie games and even some AAA games use, as it allows the game's aesthetics to last beyond its years. However, much of the game tends to look the same from one area to the next, with very little variety to spice things up.

Combat is featured in the trailer to a significant degree, almost as much as the building aspects, and while it is good, even great at times, the few enemies or variety of said enemies leaves a lot to be desired, especially as the game is finally out of early access. 

The single combat itself functions smoothly with single repeated button presses for simple combos that mostly seem the same with any of the weapons your plucky monarch can wield. The battles will also come to bear on your town with bandits striking in the night or regular raids every season. Fortunately it's not just up to you to single handedly beat back the enemies that come for your town's wealth and the crown on your head. You can build mighty ballista towers, thick and mighty walls, and even utilize catapults. If this isn't quite enough for you, chuck a building at them. As I've mentioned earlier, a great and amusing perk of the game is being able to throw literally anything at the enemy. Anything from boulders, to a whole bakery. 

While simply running around is part and parcel for a third-person adventure game with deep city-building systems, traversal is really fun here with a boost of speed that even allows you to sprint across water or lead up to a wild strike to your foe. Movement is fast, snappy, and really is a system about keeping you moving. I mentioned before the similarities to the likes of Sonic and Zelda, and even Mario's jumping antics, and that is aptly put, feeling like a game built from its inspirations.

Keeping your city thriving requires a few things. Reliable food production and agriculture systems to keep your city running and able to survive even the coming winter, sturdy wall defenses that can be repaired after battles, ballista towers, and a lot of strategic prep time in order to weather the environment or enemy army that attacks. All of this is easy to research, but will require a lot of time to learn how to use it effectively together and may even have you reloading to try different approaches.

Progression also has a few different factors. For your main character, it is a simple level climb through fighting enemies that adds more strength to hit harder, more HP to take more hits you fail to dodge or block and the addition of more weapons to use. Town progression (for your subjects and utility systems) is unlocked through the research tree. Each of those modes is simply unlocked using resources you gain and time for it to develop.

Overthrown is a title you'll need to sink a lot of time into to really find your footing. While co-op certainly elevates the experience and cuts down on the loneliness you'll feel, despite the humor in throwing everything you'll see, the solo experience does feel a tad boring at times. There is a fun and engaging experience here, but despite the full release, it does feel like it's a few patches and updates away from really being a full experience. But I am feeling something special has started here and hope they continue to build and improve the game.

Developer - Brimstone Games. Publisher - Maximum Entertainment. Released - March 18th, 2026. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (E 10) Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence. Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5. Review Access - A review code for Overthrown was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.