![]() How the sausage is made doesn't matter if its a filler-dominated, tasteless mass, but Void is certainly none of those things. That we can say we have such an indie immersive sim released in 2019 gives me a lot of hope for the genre and the industry as a whole. The procedural generation of derelict ships you plunder is incredibly simple but effective, enemies are 2D sprites (minus shimmy effect) that disappear in puffs of smoke - but you won't blink, the art style is one of its most striking features in spite of its simplicity, and cutscenes, nothing more than a series of comic strips - that I don't think have been bettered in style outside of the original Max Payne games. Void is a masterclass in excelling through its own limitations. This is a very British venture and I'm all about it.īoasting Jonathan Chey of System Shock 2 and Bioshock fame, Benjamin Lee of Ren & Stimpy (he'll love that), and Cara Ellison of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, this remains a titchy team, with presumably a budget to match, for such an ambitious project. The Kittybot that darkly mind controls its victims and the often gut-busting barks of, for example, the Scottish pirates and Scouse mutants come to mind. The story doesn't expand much beyond showing the never-ending series of hilariously banal bureaucratic hurdles fixing the ship descends into, but the dark humour leveraging the sheer human cost is enough to carry it. Craft the story item and you've progressed to the next story stage (unless you're on iron mode, of course). Luckily a bit of splicing can relieve you of some of these handicaps should they prove too annoying. These include everything from doors opening automatically for you Star Trek-style, monochrome vision, alerting enemies by hacking like a smoker intermittently or whooping like an idiot upon picking up items, being annoyingly diminutive, etc. Each new prisoner inherits the crafting progress of the previous unfortunates and shakes proceedings up with new positive and negative traits. Obviously, the only logical course of action for the hopelessly sociopathic and bureaucratic A.I., B.A.C.S (voiced deliciously by Stanley Parable's Kevan Brighting), is to activate them one by one for suicide raids of the local derelict ships of mutants for resources to fix it. The prison ship, the Void Ark, has broken down in the Sargasso Nebula, stocked to the brim as it is with desiccated prisoners ready to be awoken like instant mashed potato. The setup is both perfectly conducive to roguelike shenanigans and an absolute riot. Obviously, the only logical course of action for the hopelessly sociopathic and bureaucratic A.I., B.A.C.S (voiced deliciously by Stanley Parable's Kevan Brighting), is to activate them one by one for suicide raids of the local derelict ships of mutants for resources … More ![]() I'm being pedantic perhaps, but I mention it because I feel Void shakes things up enough that it would be a shame to lose track of the martini cocktail itself. I think the definition of late has expanded sufficiently to incorporate such aspects as meta-progression (see Dead Cells and Hades) and level-skips (see Enter The Gungeon and Spelunky). Despite its protestations contrariwise, this is a roguelike through and through. So what should crash into my lap but just that? Void is as ace as its name would suggest and easily breaks into my top ten of the year at the time of writing, BUT you should probably know what you're getting into.įirst, you'll have to forgive me a spell of sticklerism. ![]() ![]() Prey: Mooncrash was an insane roguelike-immersive sim experiment that I thought I'd never see the likes of again. One of my favourite games of last year was actually a DLC. Hubba Bubba is more versatile than I thought. An ambitious immersive sim roguelike that betrays its more humble origins, but makes for one of the most compulsive plays of the year with debatably the best comic art style (and name!) yet realised.
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