There’s something refreshing about how Caracal Games talks about Star Overdrive. When studio founder Tommaso Bonanni introduced their latest project during Nintendo’s recent Partner Showcase, his enthusiasm was genuine and direct. “We’re huge fans of Breath of the Wild,” Bonanni said. “We did our best to capture what we loved about it and make it our own.”
It’s always cool when a developer just lays bare their inspiration and tells everyone exactly what they’re trying to create. Star Overdrive, launching exclusively on Switch in 2025, is what happens when a small team decides to shoot for the moon. Actually, scratch that – they’re shooting for something much further out, crafting a sci-fi open world that spans 170 square kilometers of alien terrain. For context, that’s about 105 square miles of space to explore, which is absolutely wild for a studio that started with just three people in Rome.
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Star Overdrive: When Shield Surfing Meets Sci-Fi
The premise is quite simple: players receive a mysterious distress signal and find themselves exploring an alien world on a hoverboard. Classic sci-fi trope. But it’s in the execution where things get interesting. The hoverboard isn’t just a gimmick or a reskinned horse; it’s the core around which the entire game is built. Combat? It’s done on the board. Exploration? Board. Running from giant monsters? Better believe they’re doing it on that board. It’s as if someone looked at Breath of the Wild’s shield surfing and thought, “What if we built an entire game around that feeling?“
About The Studio
This focus on the hoverboard becomes even more fascinating when we take a look at Caracal’s history. This is a studio that’s been quietly building up to this moment. They made Downward in 2017, OkunoKA in 2018, and continued pushing boundaries with 2021: Moon Escape. But what might be most relevant is their behind-the-scenes work, porting games like Martha is Dead and Blanc to the Switch. They know this hardware. They’ve been inside its guts, figuring out what it can and can’t do.
The game spans four distinct biomes, and we know about two of them – there are “scorching sands” and “wavy waters” to cruise through. The physics-driven movement system means the hoverboard will handle differently across these terrains. What’s particularly interesting is their approach to customization. The board itself can be modified to enhance its speed, steering, and gravity capabilities, with upgrades tied to puzzle-solving and resource gathering. And the combat system is perhaps the clearest example of their focused design philosophy.
Instead of treating the hoverboard as just a way to get around, players will be pulling off melee attacks while maintaining momentum, and at the same time, working with all these unlockable abilities as they go. We don’t know the complete specifics yet, but the core idea of combat that never breaks away from that feeling of constant motion is absolutely fascinating.
A Giant Leap
The team has grown from three to ten people over the years, bringing in developers with AA and AAA experience. They won Italy’s Best Indie Studio award back in 2017, but this feels like their real swing for the fences. It’s a game that takes everything they’ve learned – from their own titles, from porting other people’s work, from studying the games they love, and pours it all into one ambitious vision.
One particularly exciting aspect is seeing how they are going to balance that freedom of movement with meaningful exploration. Creating a vast open world is one thing; but making it worth exploring is a whole ‘nother ball game, which, to be honest, even big-name studios have failed at achieving. Then again, the challenge here is exactly what makes Star Overdrive worth paying attention to. It’s what happens when a small team that deeply understands the Switch decides to push it to its limits, armed with nothing but a hoverboard and a clear vision.
2025 feels like both an eternity and a blink away, and there are a lot of questions about how a ten-person team can deliver something this ambitiously awesome. But after seeing studios of three people create massive hits, who knows? Maybe a tight-knit team of ten in Rome is exactly what it takes to bring something this unique to life.
Hoverboards And High Stakes
After receiving a mysterious distress signal, you’ll embark on a daring adventure through an alien world, uncovering secrets hidden in its depths. Ride your stylish Hoverboard to traverse stunning landscapes filled with alien structures, from scorching sands to wavy waters, each testing your traversal skills to the limit.
- Released
- 2025
- Developer(s)
- Caracal Games
- Publisher(s)
- Dear Villagers
- ESRB
- Teen
- Number of Players
- 1