Olympus Overdrive is a recent web comic by Antares and milkydayy. Our hero is a young man named Max who works from home in order to take care of his invalid mother. One day while he’s on the computer, a mysterious pop up appears on his screen. This pop up is an extremely simple “personality test” that he fills out as a joke, with joke responses. He’s extremely surprised to receive a delivery a few moments later from an extremely tall delivery person. The prize is a Trojan horse that contains Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and Cerberus.
It turns out that this visitation is part of a game devised by Zeus. It is a competition to rule Olympus, where a god is randomly partnered with a mortal and together they play against other gods. Another aspect of the game is that each god’s appearance is “reset” by the mortal player. Due to the answers Max gave when he filled out the personality test, Hades is now about four feet tall and purple, with horns. Hades is not happy about this, and neither is Max, though he agrees to help Hades (if only to make him stop crying). The exchange of information about this mysterious game is interrupted by Max’s mom, much to Max’s horror. Of course, it turns out that Max is the only one who sees Hades as purple--he looks like a boy from a prep school that requires a uniform to anyone else.
Olympus Overdrive makes extensive use of music and animation to create an interactive experience. The art has a manga-like quality, as does the set up for the story. (This is in fact emphasized by Max’s mom thinking that Hades in his school uniform reminded her of one of her anime shows.) The characters so far are extremely engaging, and I enjoyed their interactions. The most recent update, for March 10, 2013 reveals that Hades has not gone unnoticed by another player, who in turn is being observed by yet another mysterious person.
This is an extremely entertaining web comic with a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. It is a fairly recent one, so it shouldn’t be too hard to catch up.
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