Over & Out!: Bangladeshi 90’s nostalgia turned into a video game

In a small, sun-bleached neighbourhood somewhere in the mid-'90s South Asia, two boys spend their afternoons the way many of us once did — tinkering with half-broken toys, scavenging for wires, and treating the elaka like their own backyard, as it should be. That is the world Auleek—a 3D art outsourcing studio in Bangladesh — attempts to bottle in Over & Out! — an upcoming single-player adventure that is less about quests and more about the tender, everyday drama of childhood.

The conflict is pretty familiar: one of the boys is moving away, and the last week they have together becomes a quiet race against time to build a radio tower that might keep their voices connected when the world doesn't.

The premise sounds simple, but Over & Out! approaches it with the kind of sincerity usually reserved for coming-of-age films. Each chapter of the game focuses on a different toy the boys repair together—spinning tops, fishing games, kites — objects that, in the hands of children, become entire universes. These toys are not nostalgia props so much as emotional milestones; each one marks the boys inching closer to their looming separation.

The developers have structured the game like a memory you slowly walk back into: a prologue that eases players into the neighbourhood, three main chapters that layer its rhythms and routines, and an epilogue that lands the story's emotional blow once the tower is finally complete.

Instead of relying on broad aesthetic clichés of the decade, Over & Out! leans into the intimate details that defined pre-digital childhood in this part of the world. Cassette tapes with handwritten labels. Walkie-talkies that only worked after a few hits on the side. Snail mail that took weeks but felt immediate in the heart.

The environment is not flashy — it's familiar. It includes narrow apartment corridors, rickety rooftops where kites got stuck, and neighbours which oscillate between endearing and mildly exasperating. It is the kind of place where two ten-year-olds could vanish for hours and return with pockets full of screws, bottle caps, and ideas.

Mechanically, the game operates on a loop that mirrors the boys' partnership: one scavenges, the other crafts. Fixing a toy becomes as important as building the radio tower, not because of the object itself, but because of the time spent together doing it.

Mini-games, light crafting, and exploration keep the pacing gentle but purposeful. Nothing feels rushed, because nothing in childhood ever did, until the moment everything changes.

Auleek is currently in the core systems development stage, with a short prototype already capturing the tone they're heading toward. The full release, planned for late 2026, promises expanded environments, fully voiced storylines, character animations, and a crafting system that remains intentionally small-scale, reflecting the modest ambitions of the world it inhabits. If you're interested, you can add Over & Out! to your wishlist on Steam right now. That way, you can get notified when the game becomes available.

In many ways, Over & Out! is not just a game about two children trying to stay in touch. It's a portrait of a generation that learned to build connections with whatever we had lying around — wires, cardboard, bottle caps, or simply the determination to hear a friend's voice on the other end of static.

It asks a simple question, one many of us carry quietly into adulthood: What did we do when life first taught us that people could move away?