The art direction of this game is actually beautiful.

A hilarious and inventive roguelike shooter that boldly ventures into the depths of space. With its unique comic book art style, strategic decision-making, and clever humor, Void Bastards delivers a fresh and enjoyable experience for fans of the genre.

While some players may find the repetitive nature of the missions and the trial-and-error gameplay to be a drawback, the game's overall charm, humor, and strategic elements make up for these minor flaws. Void Bastards is a refreshing take on the roguelike genre that brings laughter and enjoyment to your intergalactic escapades.

What a game! I recently subscribed to Humble Choice and decided to complete the games that are going to be removed on February the 15th. This game is one of them. It wasn't on my radar and I hardly knew anything about it. Having played and completed the main objectives, I can confidently say that it's a hidden gem. I'm surprised not to have heard anything about it up to this point.

It's a rogue lite with an interesting twist. Most of the progress is kept after you die. The difference is you get to play with a new character with unique traits that might be good or bad. The different characters are justified in the story. You also get to lose some of the resources you got along the way. The weapon, armor upgrades, ammo and other resources are kept. The main point is to pillage ships to get resources in order to survive. It's a FPS mixed with resource management and making strategic decisions. The ships are manned by enemies who will rightfully kill you for daring to steal. The amount of enemies, security and hazards are all factors that you need to take into account. It might not be worth it if the enemies are too strong. You get some general intel before entering a ship in order to make your decision. But you also can't skip too many ships because you need fuels and food in order to survive. I love the risk and reward aspect in this game. The characters and setting are also very well realized. It has a unique and dark charm mixed with British humor. I love it!

In terms of flaws. I would have liked a type of training mode to test out the weapons and gadgets you unlock. It feels a bit too risky to try out new toys when it's a matter of life and death.

Honestly, there are so many things that I haven't mentioned. The mechanics can go pretty deep if you want to. There are also pirates and other enemies when you're moving your ship. Just know that it's a game worth playing if you keep an open mind. Its style is not necessarily mainstream but definitely give it a try if you're even mildly interested.

i'm out of bullets so i can't silence the camera quickly enough before it alerts security. the doors lock me in with a Screw, who i'm trying to kite around the room as a turret spits rockets at me. i'm nearly out of oxygen so i open up the map in between dodging rockets to find a clean route to the atmo room. i bumble into more turrets and use my last 2 zapper shots to disable them, but now the Secbot has caught up with me so i have to keep sprinting as i refill my air.

when this game gets going, there's so many panicked improvisations and fast decisions to be made. it's run-n-gun while lost in a maze. it pushes you hard enough that you aren't always sure you can pull it off, but somehow you make it through with a sliver of health and a few seconds to spare, and it feels fucking incredible.

the comic book art direction is brilliant and permeates the whole game; this is what borderlands wishes it could be. the megacorp satire shtick is perhaps overdone, but it's still done well and i chuckled at the enemy voice responses from time to time. the visual design is clear and well-organized, which is crucial for a game that wants to push you. there's many strategies to take and styles of play, but it's not some deus ex choose-your-hallway bullshit.

Incredibly easy to fall into "just one more level" with this game. The various systems all work nicely to vary your goals and gameplay styles based on the enemies, modifiers, and layouts. You almost always feel on your back feet, barring some generous ship traits (friendly enemies and free authorizations are significantly easier treks), which led me more than a few times to run the knife's edge between completely reckless and barely escaping. Ended a bit before I was ready to, I wish there had been more of a climax to the journey other than just cruising along the bottom of the nebula.

Um dos poucos rogue-lites que finalizei. Esse System Shock Rogue-lite com elementos de sobrevivência e Dungeon Crawling possui um dos game designs mais surpreendentemente geniais dos tempos recentes. A atmosfera de Void Bastards pode ser opressiva, mas o visual estiloso e excêntrico mantém o tom da experiência leve.

Os únicos problemas são que as batalhas contra piratas são praticamente impossíveis no início e eu senti falta de um sutil sistema de limite de peso ou espaço de inventário, assim o gameplay loop teria teor estratégico em todos os sertores. O jogador já tem de pensar trajeto, equipamento, munição que se dispõe a gastar, e evitar batalhas e confrontos perigosos; pensar a respeito de quanto e o que levar seria muito interessante e ajudaria a manter a tensão da experiência mesmo nas explorações mais tranquilas.
Não joguei a DLC.

Iba con ganas de que me gustase, y las primeras 3 h son perfectas. El juego es bonito, me voy encontrando nuevos enemigos, las naves son casi todas diferentes, las armas son interesantes.... Pero poco después los nuevos enemigos se acaban y se dedican a recolorear a los que ya hay. Empiezan a ser esponjas de balas en un juego donde no sobran y las armas no se sienten super cómodas. Empiezan a aparecer enemigos con muchísima vida a puñaos que le quitan cualquier atisbo de diversión. Y mil cosas así.

Personalmente que a las 3 h un roguelike se me empiece a hacer tan repetitivo me sorprende para mal. Una pena, al principio me veía echándole decenas de horas.

Playtime: 12 Hours
Score: 7/10

Been wanting to play this game for a while since it came out, and it was free on Epic, so I finally gave it a playthrough. I was interested in this game since it came to us from some of the devs who worked on the System Shock and Bioshock games, with the latter in particular being one of my favorite game series of all time. Plus I am someone who reads comics and have been passionate about them all my life, so the comic book art style was something that attracted me to this game as well! its basically like System Shock, if it were a roguelike.

Playing the game, it will definitely feel familiar to those who have played System shock, with the enemy types, the feeling of isolation in space, and the ships you move through. They definitely nailed the atmosphere and the feeling you could die at any moment. Each time you die, you play as a new character with their own traits. It is possible to swap traits out at specific machines or find these gene altering anomalies in space, which change your traits when you fly your ship near them. The gameplay loop involves your going from ship to ship, looting items, trying to find the main item you need and then hightailing it back to your ship. You also need to keep track of resources like fuel for your ship and food for your character. Each ship is procedurally generate with its own specific traits, that can work both against and for you. E.g. security bots being on your side, hazards like electrical wires, fire and radiation leaks.

I definitely enjoyed the gameplay loop of this game and the weapons are all fun to use. You do at the very least keep your weapons and upgrades when you die and just lose your ammo and supplies (but you start out with a small amount at the start of each run). I love the comic book art style and the soundtrack is also pretty awesome! The game can also be very funny at times, with some very dry British humor.

Some of the things I didn't like was the RNG aspects of it. You can have some runs where you get lucky and your having a great time playing, and other times where the dice doesn't roll in your favor and you just get frustrated. I don't mind RNG in games like Borderlands because its just specifically tied to the weapons you find, and not the levels themselves. I much prefer handcrafted levels that all feel unique from one another. After a while the ships all start to look the same and the gameplay starts to feel repetitive but the game ended for me right about when that started to set in, so it balanced itself out. I also just wish this game had a proper story campaign to hook me, as the games story is pretty basic and is just there to give the player urgency. Even if they perhaps included audio logs or lore entries for you to find, that explained why the universe is the way is, would have helped, but I understand that wouldn't really work with the games RNG nature.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game and I can recommend it to fans of System Shock or roguelike games. It does require a lot of RAM to play properly on PC, so if you don't have a gaming pc, I'd say check it out on console.

I love the concept of the game and it can be rather satisfying at points, but areas are disappointingly samey (aside from highly contextual gimmicks) and the basic gameplay is just that, basic, to the point where it kills my drive to go on very often. These factors make starting a new run after death a miserable endeavor instead of the new beginning that it is in many other roguelikes.
What I've said so far probably sounds much more negative than my rating does, but I must emphasize how wonderfully novel the concept is and how engrossing it can be when your resources are running dry and you make a clutch, last moment escape. There's a huge amount of untapped potential here, though having more in depth moment to moment gameplay would risk fracturing the game too hard in an Aztez-like situation, but at the very least more interesting level generation and more deliberately constructed level pieces could've gone a long way.