Even though the content of Void Bastards quickly runs thin, an expertly crafted loop and eye catching aesthetic is enough to make players invested in the galactic journey. Everything in Void Bastards revolves around your decisions and risk mitigation. Do you need food, fuel, resources, or upgrade parts enough to engage with the threats on each ship? Are you out of options and have to take on an unfavorably rolled ship anyway? These are the questions players face every turn, with consequences for those decisions perhaps appearing as soon as the next ship. Even on the ships themselves, players have to constantly weigh whether continued looting is worth the hit to their health or ammo.

Yet, when decisions do go sideways, Void Bastards is forgiving. Upon death, players retain all item upgrades and materials and are placed only a few ships back from the next objective. It may hurt to loose a character with great perks and a mound of food or ammo, but it is relatively frictionless to start again know each run has made progress.

Which is a blessing since the game’s RNG can birth ships with wacky attributes that are truly fun and some that are complete BS. Runs can be ruined by a bad succession of RNG. Further, the game itself, while delightful with its cell-shaded art, almost immediately starts becoming repetitious in its use of art assets, locations, and gameplay encounters.

Thus, it is necessary that Void Bastards keeps the pace that it does. Its risk/reward tension never ceases to be engaging and overall the game’s duration doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s not for everyone, but there is fun to be had for those that enjoy this decision making loop and seeing the games systems interact in surprising ways.

This is a game i came back to after a year then finished. I admire it for being that level of pick-up-and-play while still having some depth. Critics might say it gets a bit repetitive but, I loved that i could pick it up, play a level in 5-15 minutes, then put it back down.

The humor seems staunchly British and might not have hit me so hard because I’m a yank, but I still got a bleak chuckle out of the game’s bureaucratic nightmare.

Critics might also say that the games balance is off or that the combat is random and hectic. And theyre right. However on the other the nature of the roguelite genre is to sometimes be stacked and other times be starved. The combat IS awkward at times, but the game tries to tell you that you should be trying to avoid combat or be stealthy. Make smart use of locking doors after you go through them. Lock down sections of ships with warps as much as possible.

Some enemies seem OP, but they all have a counter. Screws can be stunned. The bookish lady’s can be mind-controlled or taken out with explosives from behind.

I liked it. If anything, I wish there were more.

Actually my favorite indie game next to Shovel Knight (Better game objectively but i was actually addicted to VBs), but its SO SHORT AND IT COSTS SO MUCHHHH.
The artstyle is so nice, and the style in general hooked me for way longer than i thought it would. If u want a a quick sentence that tells u the vibe about the game without ruining the surprise of what awaits u. Its Rogue like, but theres consistency to it and a goal. Games like 2-4 days to beat so even if youre not sure you'll be done instantly. Also if the style on the cover and trailer off puts you just turn it on and try it. Its a gem of a game that wasn't given enough content for its own worth.

Cons:
>short

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.

This is an almost wonderful game that really doesn't make any sense and ultimately isn't fun. The thing with this game is that it's a mix of meta-progression-based roguelites, like Rogue Legacy, where you aren't expected to, or might not even be possible to, beat the game on your first go since your character starts out very underpowered, and a more traditional roguelite where you start over from scratch every run. This game has runs within runs. You have one major run through the nebula, for which you have infinite lives, and then you have each individual characters run within said larger run. It's possible, and actually the goal of the game, to clear the entire nebula with the starting character. The major run has survival-style resource gathering and unlocks and you start out with absolutely nothing, and then build your arsenal throughout the major run. This is fun and where the game is great. You raid space derelicts, dynamically strategizing between slowly sneaking past deadly enemies and going Rambo on the easy ones, and you collect various loot to improve your character and allow you to survive longer. Just like any other meta-progression roguelite with survival mechanics. I love it!

The problem is that this is not the game. A run like this is only a few hours in total and not worth the money this game costs. The actual game is doing new major runs starting over completely from scratch without any of the unlocks or schematics, and playing with unlockable mutators that offer various challenges. That's the intended game, and it's really not fun. Starting over with the bullshit pea shooter that literally cannot kill anything, and having less than a handful of bullets for it, just isn't fun. The stealth doesn't work well enough and the level generation doesn't allow enough options for that to work. You will constantly find yourself forced to either abandon ship, which has a part you desperately need, or walk through a room jam packed with tough enemies that you aren't equipped to deal with. Or you'll just get killed by a random world map event taking away all of your food so your character starves.

The most baffling decision is that you are not allowed any tools to deal with automated security from the start, and you have to unlock the zapper that temporarily disables cameras, robots and gun turrets. This makes absolutely no sense beacuse security is literally everywhere literally all the time, and schematics and parts are randomized so you can't just choose to go for the zapper first. I started a major run with a gun turret right outside the very first door in the very first ship and I could do nothing but restart the run. Why ¨ would the zapper be locked?! And, since I'm complaining, the other worst decision I've seen in quite some time are the oil slick hazards. Just puddles of oil on the ground that make you slide around uncontrollably, because that's fun. And you better believe that the game loves spawning them right in front of doors that you have to pass through, forcing you to slide around obnoxiously. It's sad, because a survival crafting immersive sim roguelite with art heavily inspired by Mike Mignola should be about as much my jam as a game could possibly be, but I just can't click with this one and I'm not having any fun starting new runs. I'm still going to rate it a 3/5 since there is value here and I did enjoy that first long run that probably took me 5-10 hours total, so it's a fine enough few hours, but it should've been a slam dunk home run 5/5 for me and it just isn't.

I wanted to like this game. It has a great look and a neat, simple hook for a rogue-like. But there are too many issues for me to want to push on with it. The shooting is rather barebones and just not fun. Each ship feels a bit samey and I'm not really interested in exploring them. However, my biggest gripe is that ammo seems so scarce and you have no way to fight the enemies without bullets. With no melee attack, it just feels like I can go through a few rooms of a ship before feeling like everything is too stacked against me to continue on.

Took a while to warm up to it but once I did this was a pretty solid Roguelite. I thought that the gameplay was actually pretty fun, specifically the loot system and permanent upgrades were pretty good. I saw people complain the combat and while it was odd at first (an FPS with no Aim-Down Sights is always pretty jarring) once o got used to it was fun. Was always a "one more run" type of game largely since you could always get a major upgrade out of a run or two even if you botched it

The biggest issue by far was the variety. Weapon variety was decent but could use some more, but man, enemy variety was mediocre at best with only 6 or 7 basic types that had harder variants of themselves in later levels), and worst of all was the level design. Again there were only roughly 10 ship types, with only things like door locations, loot drops and locations, and enemy and security differences. The addition of + and - modifiers (both on characters and ships) helped add a decent amount of variety to each run but after a while when you've seen every ship layout 20 times it became stale

I think if they supported this game with a ton of DLC ship layouts, enemies, and weapons (which they already did 1 DLC that came with 1 of each) this could easily become a 4.5 or even 5 game for me

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.