Gameoverse
Entry updated 1 June 2026. Tagged: TV.
Australian animated webseries (2025). Glitch. Created and directed by Ross O'Donovan. Written by Ross O'Donovan and Arin Hanson. Voice cast includes Arin Hanson, Jschlatt, Erica Lindbeck, Elsie Lovelock, Lisa Reimold and Christopher Sabat. One 32-minute pilot to date (plus a short trailer with some original material). Colour.
The pilot opens with Kit Bodega (Lindbeck), a Cat-like humanoid, facing Malice (Reimold) and Mayhem, who threaten her village and the people she loves: when they combine into a giant Robot spider (by the latter messily eating Malice), Kit undergoes a transformation sequence where her robot backpack, Kaboodle (jschlatt), envelops her to become Powered Armour: the villains are defeated, but Kit and Kaboodle's jubilation turns to horror as they watch their world end. A tall man, probably named Dusk, approaches and offers Kit his hand.
She awakes: it is a recurring dream. Kit and Kaboodle are in a Spaceship, now employed by Dusk's organization Farcade to visit game worlds (that is, planets whose environment and characters resemble Videogames) to prevent the hero from defeating the villain, as this will result in the end of the world (see Disaster); clearly her dream is a memory of her own experience. Prior to the pilot, the show's trailer showed the pair on a planet where Gobbles (Hanson), a "Learnosaurus" (see Dinosaurs), was the hero of a videogame designed to teach children: they had been too late to stop Gobbles winning, but managed to save him. A rival organization, the Syntax, is led by Warrick (Sabat) and works to help the heroes: if successful they harvest the energy ("Float") of the destroyed planet. The pilot's plot involves the two sides trying to influence events on the game world of Flappers the Super Dolphin (probably a nod to the Ecco the Dolphin game): Kit and Kaboodle fail again, though they do rescue Flappers (Hanson); Gobbles proves helpful through his ability to learn and hence mature (see Intelligence).
There is a moment towards the end where Warwick says "the rules of the Gameoverse are cruel and unfair. With the Float we absorb ... we can change those rules, bring back all that we've lost", which might suggest that the good and bad sides in this conflict are not be as obvious as first appears. Warwick's crew does however seem evil; besides Malice and Mayhem, who he has recruited, there are also Miss Information (Lovelock) and Fold (O'Donovan) (the former seems to be human, the latter an origami-like Shapeshifter) who Kit and Kaboodle fought on Flapper's world. A series has not yet been greenlit, but as the pilot garnered 19 million views in its first ten days on YouTube, it seems likely. Though a knowledge of old videogames adds to the experience, Gameoverse's mixture of adventure, Humour and a little trauma, combined with exciting visuals showing Anime influences, makes this strong pilot one of the most promising debuts of the year. [SP]
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