After 8 years in a somewhat playable Alpha state, Overgrowth has landed in beta - but you'll be expected to pre-order if you want to get a taste of it.
With pre-orders going live at least 5 years ago, Wolfire Games have been hard at work building something worth playing within their years-in-the-making engine.
To bring a little more variety to the sandbox, the Wolfire Team have brought Overgrowth out into a Beta state by porting their already existing 'Lugaru' game into their custom 'Phoenix' engine. While already using player models from Lugaru in the past to showcase the standard view of their engine, the port brings every section of their old game's campaign across from players of the beta to have a crack at in a re-imagined state.
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Any previous Alpha access will, of course, carry over the the beta stage - but there's no saying how many more years Overgrowth will sit in that state or what exactly Overgrowth plans to be by the end of development. For now, however, it feels like a survival sim with some fairly satisfying beast-on-beast active combat involving nimble, fast movements, fluid hand-to-hand swings and an interesting use of a dagger.
So if you're just looking to see the slow development of a engine now seemingly based around having tall rabbits beat each other up with sharp objects, it's a good fit. There's local multiplayer, too; so you can stab your friend's rabbit.
