Review: Gameoverse “Pilot”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
In a universe where each planet is the world of a video game, protagonist characters defeat their respective antagonists, but inadvertently doom their planet due to a mysterious mechanism that destroys them. Kit, Kaboodle, and Gobbles, three refugees from their own destroyed planets, work with the organization Farcade to prevent further destruction by sabotaging protagonists, while a rival group, Syntax, sends agents to assure the game’s completion and the planet’s destruction in order to mine it for mysterious data for their own ends.
OUR TAKE
Glitch Productions are back to roll the dice with another pilot, this time being GAMEOVERSE, created by Ross “RubberRoss” O’Donovan and co-wrote by Arin Hanson of the Game Grumps. And this isn’t even the first pass at this idea, as Ross previously made a brief four part mini series of it back in 2009, focusing on two characters, Gobble and Flappers. Obviously the idea has had a lot of time to get tinkered with in the seventeen years since then, now centered on two rival teams of video game characters, Farcade and Syntax, who have been forced out of their own game worlds and come upon a dark discovery: When a game is completed by a “hero” character defeating a “villain” character (not even killing, just beating them ONCE in a boss fight), the world immediately explodes in an inferno of fiery red death. Why things work this way or who benefits from this is unclear, but it seems that’s something that the show will explore and hopefully uncover if it is able to go to series. Especially since the pilot opens with our protagonist, Kit (played by Erica Lindbeck), experiencing this for herself when her own planet explodes right after she finished a fight that she thought would bring peace to her friends and community.
I gotta admit, this bit of worldbuilding is a tad confusing to me, since this universe is apparently full of worlds that are all doomed to explode if one specific designated character is able to accomplish a task of defeating another specific designated character, which they are nudged towards doing by design. I know these are all meant to be riffs on several genres of video games, and they’re even called Game Worlds, but are they games being played by human players? Is the exploding just a result of resetting the game? I’m trying to not go down a rabbit hole of nitpicking and hope that this will all be sufficiently answered in time if they’re able to, but it’s really making me want to pick some nits. There is acknowledgement that Kit’s old world and the world of Flappers the Super Dolphin, which she and her friends are there to save, are strangely similar, and telling someone on a Game World the truth of their fate while on the world apparently causes the world itself to become sentient and eliminate intruders, which may be an indication that some of these worlds were all designed the same on purpose, so I’m going to be optimistic and hope that the incongruities of this part of the conflict are there for a purpose. The point of a pilot is to establish the premise and make you want to see what’s next, and based on the viewcount (4 Million at the time of this writing), it looks like a lot of people are eager to see what’s next.
And it looks like a lot of why people are tuning in here (besides the stacked cast and crew) is because the characters and animation are very engaging. Kit is another cute animal-themed notch in Erica Lindbeck’s belt of cute animal-themed characters, Arin Hanson reprises his roles of Gobbles and Flappers from the original shorts but with significantly developed personalities, Ross O’Donovan gets to play some evil minions, and voice acting veteran Chris Sabat plays an effective main antagonist in Warrick, who runs Syntax, the rival group to Farcade. It’s clear that a lot of love went into this first episode and a lot of people want to see them make more. I certainly do as well, but I say this hoping my confusion about the plot will be cleared up eventually. But as a pilot, it’s a solid start, and like other Glitch shows I’ve seen, I expect it to reach greatness when it’s greenlit.
