The last living human is depending on you in Void Terrarium++! Rediscover a bleak yet charming story of a young girl named Toriko and her robot protector, along with extra features such as new afflictions, outfits, and an new environment to explore. System Upgrade: Void Terrarium++ looks and performs better than ever on PlayStation5, and comes bundled with additional content like new emotes, outfits, hairstyles, and Toriko diseases. Legacy Protocol: Void Terrarium’s amazing visual style, unique roguelike gameplay, and caretaking system all make a return. Hope in a Cold World: From the creator of A Rose in the Twilight and htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, this harrowing roguelike adventure combines cute visuals with a somber yet whimsical post-apocalyptic story. This edition's new content was announced in Japan alongside a DLC pack for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch that included the new diseases, customization feature and interactions with Toriko. The DLC has not been announced internationally.
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KEY NOTES
-Rogue-lite gameplay with a hybrid action/turn based combat.
-No Voiced Audio
INTRODUCTION
Nippon Ichi Software ("NIS") are mostly known for their Disgaea strategy role playing games, but they have developed many other smaller titles that mostly go unnoticed and fall below the radar. Void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium ("Void Terrarium") is one of such titles and it was directed by Masayuki Furuya who handled other NIS' similar works like Rose in the Twilight, The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince and htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary.
STORY
In a post-apocalyptic world where humans have died out due to contamination on the surface and underground, a lone small robot named Robbie suddenly wakes up from his slumber. He soon meets factoryAI who controls the functions of a scrapyard. He also finds a young girl on the brink of death nearby.
With the help of factoryAI, Robbie decided to treat and care for the apparent last human in the world who they named as Toriko. Using her vast knowledge, factoryAI drafts up various blueprints for medicine and devices while Robbie is tasked with searching for the necessary materials in the surrounding areas that are inhabited by maverick robots and creatures.
The story itself is quite light with only a few story beats across the game. Many of such beats revolve around the need to create a story related item and not much more than that. The interesting backstory relating to the humans creating underground factories to harvest materials and their subsequent extinction does play a role in the story, but most of it is spent on the routine tasks. Director Furuya wanted to tell a story that would simply stir the player's emotions and to that end, I thought he did a good job due to the focus on the characters than the overall story. Just when I thought it was going to just be a relaxing slice of life story, the story near the end took me on a rollercoaster of emotions and I finished the game with lingering thoughts on the ending.
CHARACTERS
There aren't many characters in the game as expected and it is just pretty much the 3 core characters throughout the game. Robbie doesn't speak at all, but a lot of his personality is evident by how he interacts with Toriko and factoryAI. He's a simple character overall, but his small actions such as hugging factory AI or when patting Toriko's head goes a long way to appreciate his character.
FactoryAI serves as the main chatterbox of the group since she's the only one with actual lines and dialogue. Despite being an A.I., she speaks in a very animated way and her appearance on the monitor is represented by face emojis which constantly changes throughout a conversation. Unlike the other two characters, she probably has the most depth as a character because she frequently deals with her remorse in ultimately causing the destruction of humankind.
I could feel her intent to repent as much as she could by protecting and thinking of Toriko's well-being. Overall, I found her to be a very amusing character and a delight.
Rounding out the final character of the trinity is Toriko who is very adorable and just stays inside her large fishbowl home called the Terrarium. Like Robbie, she doesn't have any dialogue, but her actions and interactions in the game can tug at people's heartstrings. One of the biggest focus on the game was creating an emotional bond between Toriko and the player through Robbie. As I spent many hours interacting with her, feeding her, patting her head and watch her play with her toys, and see her become weak from illness or hunger, I definitely felt a connection throughout and really cared for her well-being.
To a certain extent, I felt the same about the other two characters since they were all likable.
GRAPHICS AND ART DIRECTION
For a game with a very small budget, the graphics look beautiful at times in the Terrarium. The colors are vibrant making Toriko's home stand out as a small paradise within the dark bleak outside world. Toriko and Robbie looks like they were hand drawn. Toriko in particular has a myriad of different animations making it a treat to see.
The graphics within the dungeons on the other hand are mostly unremarkable. Not much detail in the textures and models of the enemies. The dungeon design themselves lack variety and are differentiated by mostly different colors.
MUSIC
The music in the title screen, during some events and at the Terrarium are atmospheric. I found it beautifully haunting at times and convey the small hope within the bleak world.
The dungeon music have a bit more range where some of them are relaxing and atmospheric. Other dungeon music turns it up to create an upbeat trance and techno sound to reflect the intensity that some battles can get in the dungeons. Both music styles I enjoyed and thought they fit well into the game.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop consists of going to dungeons for resources and materials before returning back to the Terrarium to care for Toriko. There's not much variance on the gameplay loop, but I found it entertaining nonetheless.
DUNGEONS
Like many rogue-lite games, the dungeons in Void Terrarium are all randomly generated. Each dungeon Layer (floors), consists of rooms of varying sizes and narrow hallways that connects with each other. Advancing to the next layer requires searching for the portal.
Along the way, items are scattered across the layer that you can pick up. Enemies will spawn indefinitely, but not at a fast enough rate that it would start to feel overwhelming. There's also many floor traps hidden throughout. Some of the annoying ones include status ailment infliction, teleportation, or the alarm one which causes you to be instantly surrounded by enemies.
Dungeons are nearly identical from one another except for the type of enemies found within and some items.
COMBAT
The combat might seem like an action game at first blush since you have free movement with the analog stick or D-Pad and you attack by pressing the attack button. However, the game actually makes use of turn based mechanics which is similar to the Valkyria Chronicles games. Here, enemies don't move, attack or take any action until you do. This means that if you stand completely still, enemies won't move or even attack you. You're also moving on an invisible grid like a SRPG game so you can calculate how far enemies can move and where they can move. Moving one space is equivalent to a turn.
Other than your health gauge, you also have an Energy gauge that slowly depletes for every action you take. Once it gets fully depleted, your health gauge will start to decrease. You can recover the Energy gauge with various items you pick up including batteries.
Defeating enemies will give you EXP and can level up like in a typical RPG. All of your base stats will increase slightly on level up except for your Energy gauge which doesn't refill or increase any higher. You will also have an opportunity to pick a skill from 2-3 random ones. These skills range from fixed stat upgrades, passive skills and active skills.
The passive skills themselves make up the vast majority of the ones available. Some of them include increasing your inventory size, increase health healed from items, recover health when attacking or my favorite, Item Power which boosts various stats based on the item types in your inventory.
Active Skills are offensive ones that are only used during combat. They have various affects, but most costs Energy per use and have a specific turn cooldown before you can use them again. Only 4 Active Skills can be equipped at a time.
Other than your own health and energy, you have to keep an eye on Toriko's condition which is being monitored and displayed on the screen similar to a Tamogotchi toy. The hearts represent her health gauge as well as her hunger gauge which deteriorates the longer you are in the dungeon. The screen also monitors how dirty her Terrarium gets during your dungeon dive. Too much dirt accumulated will make her sick. She would eventually got bored by being on her own as well which will contribute to getting sick. At least with the dirty Terrarium and Toriko's boredom, you can remedy those while in the dungeons by making the PET take care of it. PET is a device that was created to take care of such duties, but PET actions require a large portion of Robbie's energy. You can access the PET menu anytime with a button press.
There are many types of enemies in the game and each of them have stronger variations with modified skillsets and abilities. Many of them require different approaches which opens up the strategical side of the game. Weapons have optimal uses against certain enemies as well as armors that reduce damage from certain enemies. The accessories generally have a wider range of functions. Other than equipment and healing items, you can find gadgets and bombs to use and throw at enemies.
The journey through the dungeons lasts until you reached the top layer or you die. Everything in your inventory will be auto converted until into one of the 4 main resources (Bio, Mineral, Energy and Contaminated) except for key materials and blueprints. For food, you have the option to store them inside the vault (if you have available space) or convert them into resources. Your levels, stat upgrades and other skill bonuses are lost as well.
There's no way to get a Game Over while in a dungeon even when you die. However, it is a Game Over if Toriko dies due to illness or hunger. Fortunately, it's quite easy to avoid such scenarios unless you're actively trying to see what would happen if you neglect her too long.
In regards to Toriko's illnesses, she can be inflicted with many different ones depending on how dirty the Terrarium is and the contamination level she has from eating food with high contamination. The less serious illness are the common cold and an illness where she can't stop crying. Other serious ones include emitting a stench that attracts bugs to crawl all over her body and one where her skin gets very extremely bloated.
Curing her illness is surprisingly simple. Special dungeons are available during this time which has all of the materials you need to create a remedy. Despite how serious looking some of her illness are, they don't have any permanent affects on her and on the gameplay. Of course, psychological effects on the player is a different story.
TERRARIUM
Outside of dungeon exploration, a large amount of time is spent in Toriko's Terrarium and the main hub. After returning from an expedition, you have to feed her with the food you find and clean up her Terrarium (which fortunately doesn't cost anything).
The resources and materials you get are used to make furniture for Toriko's home, clothes and other combat upgrades. One nice side effect for making furniture is that you get a permanent stat or bonus upgrade when you make them the first time which greatly helps in making future dungeon exploration much smoother. The exception are Toriko's clothes which do not offer any bonuses. Before you can make anything, you need the required blueprints which are randomly found in dungeons.
The Terrarium itself starts off with very little, but you can eventually fill it up with many things. Unfortunately, the space isn't that big even though there's a large amount of furniture you can make in the game. With four levels of depth in placing furniture, you can overlap them to ultimately fit more. The furniture are not just for decoration most of the time since Toriko will engage and interact with some of them. She will sit on things like beds and chairs, play with building blocks, toy cars and a painting set.
She will even hide behind some objects which gives you an opportunity to find and interact with her.
Other than furniture, you can also craft Knacks which gives you some level of customization and playstyle builds. What they effectively do is give higher priority to certain skills to show up on level up. You can even combine it with up to two other Knacks as well.
In addition to the Knacks, there are Skill Removals that you earn from some first time furniture bonuses. The Skill Removals allows you to completely remove a skill from the skill pool so that they will never show up on level up. Remove a number of them will greatly increase the odds of the higher rarity ones to show up. With good Skill Removals, you can become godly powerful in this game.
POST GAME
The game doesn't have a Post Game, but near the very end of the game, The Endless Ruins are unlocked which is a limitless dungeon for those that enjoyed the dungeon crawling aspect of the game. Outside time stops while you're in the dungeon so Toriko won't ever get hungry or get sick while you're enjoying the dungeon exploration at your leisure.
FINAL REMARKS
Void Terrarium isn't very long if you're just focusing on the story segments. It took me roughly a little over 30 hours to complete the game, but I spent extra time just grinding for resources to craft more furniture.
The story is simple and light in execution. The characters are few and are fairly one dimensional. With having said that, I enjoyed the game quite a lot. The atmosphere, characters, and the plot worked very well and had me engaged from beginning to end.
The dungeon crawling rogue-lite gameplay was oddly addicting and fun. Despite the bland dungeons with little variety, I was able to ignore all of that because of how fun the core gameplay was. Like my experience with Yomawari Midnight Shadows and The Cruel King and the Great Hero, Void Terrarium was able to emotionally stir my soul. I recommend this game not only to those interested in the rogue-lite gameplay, but to also people looking to get emotionally invested in a game.
The sequel is just around the corner and I look forward to trying it out.
KEY NOTES
-Rogue-lite gameplay with a hybrid action/turn based combat.
-No Voiced Audio
INTRODUCTION
Nippon Ichi Software ("NIS") are mostly known for their Disgaea strategy role playing games, but they have developed many other smaller titles that mostly go unnoticed and fall below the radar. Void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium ("Void Terrarium") is one of such titles and it was directed by Masayuki Furuya who handled other NIS' similar works like Rose in the Twilight, The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince and htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary.
STORY
In a post-apocalyptic world where humans have died out due to contamination on the surface and underground, a lone small robot named Robbie suddenly wakes up from his slumber. He soon meets factoryAI who controls the functions of a scrapyard. He also finds a young girl on the brink of death nearby.
With the help of factoryAI, Robbie decided to treat and care for the apparent last human in the world who they named as Toriko. Using her vast knowledge, factoryAI drafts up various blueprints for medicine and devices while Robbie is tasked with searching for the necessary materials in the surrounding areas that are inhabited by maverick robots and creatures.
The story itself is quite light with only a few story beats across the game. Many of such beats revolve around the need to create a story related item and not much more than that. The interesting backstory relating to the humans creating underground factories to harvest materials and their subsequent extinction does play a role in the story, but most of it is spent on the routine tasks. Director Furuya wanted to tell a story that would simply stir the player's emotions and to that end, I thought he did a good job due to the focus on the characters than the overall story. Just when I thought it was going to just be a relaxing slice of life story, the story near the end took me on a rollercoaster of emotions and I finished the game with lingering thoughts on the ending.
CHARACTERS
There aren't many characters in the game as expected and it is just pretty much the 3 core characters throughout the game. Robbie doesn't speak at all, but a lot of his personality is evident by how he interacts with Toriko and factoryAI. He's a simple character overall, but his small actions such as hugging factory AI or when patting Toriko's head goes a long way to appreciate his character.
FactoryAI serves as the main chatterbox of the group since she's the only one with actual lines and dialogue. Despite being an A.I., she speaks in a very animated way and her appearance on the monitor is represented by face emojis which constantly changes throughout a conversation. Unlike the other two characters, she probably has the most depth as a character because she frequently deals with her remorse in ultimately causing the destruction of humankind.
I could feel her intent to repent as much as she could by protecting and thinking of Toriko's well-being. Overall, I found her to be a very amusing character and a delight.
Rounding out the final character of the trinity is Toriko who is very adorable and just stays inside her large fishbowl home called the Terrarium. Like Robbie, she doesn't have any dialogue, but her actions and interactions in the game can tug at people's heartstrings. One of the biggest focus on the game was creating an emotional bond between Toriko and the player through Robbie. As I spent many hours interacting with her, feeding her, patting her head and watch her play with her toys, and see her become weak from illness or hunger, I definitely felt a connection throughout and really cared for her well-being.
To a certain extent, I felt the same about the other two characters since they were all likable.
GRAPHICS AND ART DIRECTION
For a game with a very small budget, the graphics look beautiful at times in the Terrarium. The colors are vibrant making Toriko's home stand out as a small paradise within the dark bleak outside world. Toriko and Robbie looks like they were hand drawn. Toriko in particular has a myriad of different animations making it a treat to see.
The graphics within the dungeons on the other hand are mostly unremarkable. Not much detail in the textures and models of the enemies. The dungeon design themselves lack variety and are differentiated by mostly different colors.
MUSIC
The music in the title screen, during some events and at the Terrarium are atmospheric. I found it beautifully haunting at times and convey the small hope within the bleak world.
The dungeon music have a bit more range where some of them are relaxing and atmospheric. Other dungeon music turns it up to create an upbeat trance and techno sound to reflect the intensity that some battles can get in the dungeons. Both music styles I enjoyed and thought they fit well into the game.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop consists of going to dungeons for resources and materials before returning back to the Terrarium to care for Toriko. There's not much variance on the gameplay loop, but I found it entertaining nonetheless.
DUNGEONS
Like many rogue-lite games, the dungeons in Void Terrarium are all randomly generated. Each dungeon Layer (floors), consists of rooms of varying sizes and narrow hallways that connects with each other. Advancing to the next layer requires searching for the portal.
Along the way, items are scattered across the layer that you can pick up. Enemies will spawn indefinitely, but not at a fast enough rate that it would start to feel overwhelming. There's also many floor traps hidden throughout. Some of the annoying ones include status ailment infliction, teleportation, or the alarm one which causes you to be instantly surrounded by enemies.
Dungeons are nearly identical from one another except for the type of enemies found within and some items.
COMBAT
The combat might seem like an action game at first blush since you have free movement with the analog stick or D-Pad and you attack by pressing the attack button. However, the game actually makes use of turn based mechanics which is similar to the Valkyria Chronicles games. Here, enemies don't move, attack or take any action until you do. This means that if you stand completely still, enemies won't move or even attack you. You're also moving on an invisible grid like a SRPG game so you can calculate how far enemies can move and where they can move. Moving one space is equivalent to a turn.
Other than your health gauge, you also have an Energy gauge that slowly depletes for every action you take. Once it gets fully depleted, your health gauge will start to decrease. You can recover the Energy gauge with various items you pick up including batteries.
Defeating enemies will give you EXP and can level up like in a typical RPG. All of your base stats will increase slightly on level up except for your Energy gauge which doesn't refill or increase any higher. You will also have an opportunity to pick a skill from 2-3 random ones. These skills range from fixed stat upgrades, passive skills and active skills.
The passive skills themselves make up the vast majority of the ones available. Some of them include increasing your inventory size, increase health healed from items, recover health when attacking or my favorite, Item Power which boosts various stats based on the item types in your inventory.
Active Skills are offensive ones that are only used during combat. They have various affects, but most costs Energy per use and have a specific turn cooldown before you can use them again. Only 4 Active Skills can be equipped at a time.
Other than your own health and energy, you have to keep an eye on Toriko's condition which is being monitored and displayed on the screen similar to a Tamogotchi toy. The hearts represent her health gauge as well as her hunger gauge which deteriorates the longer you are in the dungeon. The screen also monitors how dirty her Terrarium gets during your dungeon dive. Too much dirt accumulated will make her sick. She would eventually got bored by being on her own as well which will contribute to getting sick. At least with the dirty Terrarium and Toriko's boredom, you can remedy those while in the dungeons by making the PET take care of it. PET is a device that was created to take care of such duties, but PET actions require a large portion of Robbie's energy. You can access the PET menu anytime with a button press.
There are many types of enemies in the game and each of them have stronger variations with modified skillsets and abilities. Many of them require different approaches which opens up the strategical side of the game. Weapons have optimal uses against certain enemies as well as armors that reduce damage from certain enemies. The accessories generally have a wider range of functions. Other than equipment and healing items, you can find gadgets and bombs to use and throw at enemies.
The journey through the dungeons lasts until you reached the top layer or you die. Everything in your inventory will be auto converted until into one of the 4 main resources (Bio, Mineral, Energy and Contaminated) except for key materials and blueprints. For food, you have the option to store them inside the vault (if you have available space) or convert them into resources. Your levels, stat upgrades and other skill bonuses are lost as well.
There's no way to get a Game Over while in a dungeon even when you die. However, it is a Game Over if Toriko dies due to illness or hunger. Fortunately, it's quite easy to avoid such scenarios unless you're actively trying to see what would happen if you neglect her too long.
In regards to Toriko's illnesses, she can be inflicted with many different ones depending on how dirty the Terrarium is and the contamination level she has from eating food with high contamination. The less serious illness are the common cold and an illness where she can't stop crying. Other serious ones include emitting a stench that attracts bugs to crawl all over her body and one where her skin gets very extremely bloated.
Curing her illness is surprisingly simple. Special dungeons are available during this time which has all of the materials you need to create a remedy. Despite how serious looking some of her illness are, they don't have any permanent affects on her and on the gameplay. Of course, psychological effects on the player is a different story.
TERRARIUM
Outside of dungeon exploration, a large amount of time is spent in Toriko's Terrarium and the main hub. After returning from an expedition, you have to feed her with the food you find and clean up her Terrarium (which fortunately doesn't cost anything).
The resources and materials you get are used to make furniture for Toriko's home, clothes and other combat upgrades. One nice side effect for making furniture is that you get a permanent stat or bonus upgrade when you make them the first time which greatly helps in making future dungeon exploration much smoother. The exception are Toriko's clothes which do not offer any bonuses. Before you can make anything, you need the required blueprints which are randomly found in dungeons.
The Terrarium itself starts off with very little, but you can eventually fill it up with many things. Unfortunately, the space isn't that big even though there's a large amount of furniture you can make in the game. With four levels of depth in placing furniture, you can overlap them to ultimately fit more. The furniture are not just for decoration most of the time since Toriko will engage and interact with some of them. She will sit on things like beds and chairs, play with building blocks, toy cars and a painting set.
She will even hide behind some objects which gives you an opportunity to find and interact with her.
Other than furniture, you can also craft Knacks which gives you some level of customization and playstyle builds. What they effectively do is give higher priority to certain skills to show up on level up. You can even combine it with up to two other Knacks as well.
In addition to the Knacks, there are Skill Removals that you earn from some first time furniture bonuses. The Skill Removals allows you to completely remove a skill from the skill pool so that they will never show up on level up. Remove a number of them will greatly increase the odds of the higher rarity ones to show up. With good Skill Removals, you can become godly powerful in this game.
POST GAME
The game doesn't have a Post Game, but near the very end of the game, The Endless Ruins are unlocked which is a limitless dungeon for those that enjoyed the dungeon crawling aspect of the game. Outside time stops while you're in the dungeon so Toriko won't ever get hungry or get sick while you're enjoying the dungeon exploration at your leisure.
FINAL REMARKS
Void Terrarium isn't very long if you're just focusing on the story segments. It took me roughly a little over 30 hours to complete the game, but I spent extra time just grinding for resources to craft more furniture.
The story is simple and light in execution. The characters are few and are fairly one dimensional. With having said that, I enjoyed the game quite a lot. The atmosphere, characters, and the plot worked very well and had me engaged from beginning to end.
The dungeon crawling rogue-lite gameplay was oddly addicting and fun. Despite the bland dungeons with little variety, I was able to ignore all of that because of how fun the core gameplay was. Like my experience with Yomawari Midnight Shadows and The Cruel King and the Great Hero, Void Terrarium was able to emotionally stir my soul. I recommend this game not only to those interested in the rogue-lite gameplay, but to also people looking to get emotionally invested in a game.
The sequel is just around the corner and I look forward to trying it out.