Sombra, real name Olivia Colomar is a fictional character in the Overwatch universe, a 2016 video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

In the game's narrative, she is an exceptional black bag operation hacker from Mexico that had joined Talon, a criminal organization aligned against Overwatch.

Though Blizzard considered the alternate reality game to have drawn interest in Sombra, they found the prolonged campaign taxed players' attention, and subsequently have limited new character promotions to only a few weeks ahead of their formal announcements.

This version of the character was changed to Mexican in origin, and took inspiration from Aztec culture, giving her a headdress and glowing green spikes across her body.

Goodman considers Sombra to be "evil in the sense that she's kind of only out for herself", but will stay loyal to her employer as long as the situation continues to work out for her and further her own agendas.

[3] For Overwatch 2, Sombra's design was changed slightly, adding more defined shoes and kneepads to her legs, a glowing double circle to the shaved side of her head, and various ribbon cables throughout her outfit and across her hair.

[16][17] Sombra may also put down a "translocator" to teleport, and can turn invisible for an infinite amount of time and gain a burst of speed to hide behind enemy lines to perform her hacks.

[4] Using this past criticism, they gave similar stealth abilities to Sombra, but in combination with the hacking skills as to be a more effective contribution to the team regardless of their opponents' style.

[4] Sombra's initial base form saw her invisibility as a constant, passive ability in which she could break her stealth at a certain radius as she approached closer to other players.

However, they were emboldened by the successful playtesting of Ana and her sleep-inducing ability which they were able to tweak quickly in response to feedback, and believed they would be able to manage Sombra's hacking skills in the same manner.

[23] Soon after the sequel's October 2022 release into early access, players noted a bug involving Sombra being able to contest the objective on payload maps in a manner which kept her safe from enemy detection.

[24] Blizzard had planned a long-term alternate reality game (ARG) for Sombra as early as the open beta period for Overwatch.

[28][29][13] The ARG concluded during BlizzCon on November 4, 2016, with the official reveal of Sombra,[30] where it was announced that she would be introduced to the game's public testing region on PC in the following week.

"[34] Fellow writer for the site Jessica Lachenal emphasized Sombra's confidence in turn, considering her a good foil for the more cold characters like Widowmaker and adding "Impish doesn’t even begin to cover her personality; she has fun with what she does [...] she’s a great breath of fresh air in a continually developing diverse world.

She further noted that Sombra was one of the few female Mexican characters in gaming, and was grateful the developers veered away from the usual archetypes of that culture.

[40] On the other hand while Natalie Flores stated how overjoyed she was at Sombra's reveal, hoping it would lead to a wider variety of Latinas in gaming, she noticed instead it led to a trend of such characters using her as a blueprint.

Namely she pointed out several, including Sombra, often portrayed as involved in criminal activities or gang culture, and felt there was an increased effort of "exotification" in regards to them.

"[41] Guilherme Pedrosa Carvalho de Araújo and Gleislla Soares Monteiro in the Brazilian journal Revista Sistemas e Mídias Digitais also noted her criminal background as a common stereotype of Latino characters in video games.