There are a lot of people who talk about this game with hushed lips. I can see how this is frustrating for people that want a fuller recommendation and for those who didn’t enjoy it as much as people like me. If I’m being honest, it's probably wiser to just act as another voice echoing the “this game is great, just go play it mentality,” because this game DESERVES to be played unspoiled. If you like games in general, and are even slightly interested in it, give it a go. Stop reading this, you owe it to yourself to play a game as good as Void Stranger blind.
However, this game really is special. I really, really want to talk about it more in depth, and this site is where I talk about games. I will keep it very light on spoilers. I have been that spiteful person that continues to read/watch/listen past the spoiler warning, and I’ve often regretted it, so I refuse to actually spoil this game in full.
So what is Void Stranger? For those uninitiated, it's a 2D sokoban puzzle game. Sokoban is a genre that stems from the 1982 title of the same name, where the goal was to push around boxes in a warehouse. What you need to understand from this description is that everything is on a grid, including the player. Think Minecraft in 2D, but you can only move in increments of 1 block. Some more notable games in the same vein are 2019’s ‘Baba is You,’ and 2016’s ‘Stephen’s Sausage Roll.’ Sokoban games focus on creating puzzles in these grid like environments, usually with a gimmick that restructures the already existing format of Sokoban. In Stephen’s Sausage Roll, it's the fork. In Baba is You, it's how objects are defined in the space of play. And in Void Stranger, it's moving around the environment with a wand. It's these limitations that help Sokoban games to focus on their puzzles, as opposed to other titles that are games WITH puzzles, not puzzle games. The simple structure of Sokoban games (which oftentimes don’t have much more than four directional input) that allows the designer to hand craft situations to test the players wits, without having to account for a myriad of variables.
As far as structure in puzzle games go, I find it hard for a game to juggle narrative and gameplay in a coherent way. The easiest way I can describe this is by looking at various puzzle games and seeing which they decide to focus on. Tetris is a arcade-y puzzle game with no story, yet elegantly designed gameplay. Baba is You is the same, where there is no overarching narrative connecting the puzzles. These games are able to achieve good puzzles by not worrying about telling a narrative at all and just focusing on mechanics. Then you have games like the Portal series where the gimmicks behind the puzzles are fun to interact with, but the puzzles are kinda shit. However, I think these games are great (in particular Portal 1) because they use the premise of solving puzzles to create an interesting story. It also helps the pacing of the story, since the player isn’t very likely to get stuck on a hard puzzle (the puzzles are really easy). This approach is easy to see in playtime as well. The Portal games can easily be beaten in one sitting (I did so with both on my first playthroughs), yet the harder puzzle games might require hours for a single puzzle.
Now to be clear, I don’t think it is a fault of any of the mentioned games. They focus on only one of the two aspects mentioned and I like both approaches. I mainly bring this up to highlight that Void Stranger is able to do both. It's not that Void Stranger has a good story with a good puzzle game slapped on, or vice versa, but that they aid each other to elevate the whole experience.
It's here where I would like to interject with another spoiler warning, but with a bit more explanation as to why you should go play, as opposed to just saying go play. If you like hard puzzle games, you will probably like Void Stranger. If you like games with good stories, and are willing to put up with difficult puzzles, you will probably like Void Stranger. But most important to the discussion of spoilers, if you like what I would call “Mechanical Learning” games (some people call these Metroid-Branias) such as Outer Wilds, TUNIC, or Her Story, you will probably like Void Stranger. If you’ve played any of those titles, then I think you can begin to understand why the community surrounding this game is so careful with its spoilers.
It's this last element of design that allows for the game to intertwin gameplay and narrative so elegantly. This is because of how these “Mechanical Learning” games work. They operate in the design space that we might call ‘Meta’ gaming. Where part of the game is designed to interact with the player to a certain extent. Puzzles for the sake of puzzles can be boring, and yet, a game with a really good story that is constantly interrupted by tons of gameplay might also be considered to have bad pacing. It’s through this interactive part of the game that players that are attracted to both types of puzzle games can become more easily invested. When done correctly, meta stuff is often among the best stories games have to offer, mostly because of how unique it is to the medium of video games. Likewise, by incorporating these story elements into the game (as opposed to more and more cutscenes, exposition dumps, and item descriptions that modern games love to use) you actually get the benefit of having your story be directly tied to gameplay.
Void Stranger is a game where your understanding of it will be reshaped over and over as you continue to progress through the game. When you start the game for the first time, following a settings screen, you’ll be presented the opportunity to draw your own brand. This, along with the “inscription” you can inspect in the first room of the game, seem very obtuse and archaic by design. If you’re like me, these are the kinds of details that will stick out in your mind as you progress, wondering what purpose they serve, and why the devs so intentionally stuck them at the very beginning. It's this sort of prodding at your imagination that Void Stranger excels at. It's a game that rewards your observation with progress on larger mysteries found in the void. If these details elude you however, it will become immediately apparent that not everything is what it seems down here upon your first death. For most this will happen early on, so I don’t feel it's too big a spoiler, but essentially the game directly asks you to make a choice regarding how to proceed. This choice does have significance, but realization of what that significance is won’t happen until much later.
It's the process of learning new ways to interact with your environment that I love in these games. Learning new tricks by testing hypotheses is such a cool way to reward player curiosity. There isn’t much more to say about the meta elements without fully discussing spoilers. For me at least, they were really fun to interact with, and I had many “Holy Shit”, jaw on the floor moments. At least 5, which might be the most any individual game has had me in that mindset. I LOVED Void Stranger during these moments. Trying to piece together progression on a larger scale than individual puzzle rooms was just plain fun. I cannot praise this aspect of the game enough.
If you’ll allow a hard segway, the puzzles can be really difficult. Especially the “post-credit” content I found to be really hard when I “fully engaged” with it. This is the one reason why I’m hesitant to recommend Void Stranger to everyone. I’m really grateful I did all the hardest puzzles, as there is a good pay off at the end of all the content, and I really felt a sense of accomplishment by overcoming it. I think there was only one puzzle that I found to be unfair in the entire game, and that was the only time I had to consult a guide. I would consider that a success. It's very hard to talk about a puzzle game’s puzzles without visual cues, and without giving away the ‘a-ha’ moments where you begin to understand how to interact with simple mechanics, so all I can say was that I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The story, although simple, I found to be really compelling. It gets better the more you put into it, so I would highly recommend trying to find all narrative content. There was one scene in particular that had me nearly well up, and I think it was well earned. The Mother-Daughter dynamic feels fully fleshed out, although I can’t really dive too far in without more spoilers. As someone who doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with their parents, I found myself re-evaluating my own relationships thanks to this game. I don’t think I can give much more praise to a story than saying that it has affected me outside of my playtime, so I will leave it there for my thoughts on the game.
Miscellaneous thoughts that didn’t fit into the script:
The sound track is phenomenal. Like seriously, not just good, great.
I love the atmosphere in the game. I think it's easiest to feel when you walk into a ‘tree room’, but I love how it adapts as you find more secrets. Coming to an understanding of where you actually are, and what that place is, is hinted at far before you reach an actual explanation which I found to be really cool.
I loved all the little moments with NPC’s. This game doesn’t have sprawling prose or flashy use of figurative language, but I thought that all the writing was fitting for all the characters. That’s really all you need to be successful, and I’m glad that it was so focused. Not everything can be a Disco Elysium or a Planescape: Torment, and to be honest, not everything should be.
If you read this, thank you. Play Void Stranger.
However, this game really is special. I really, really want to talk about it more in depth, and this site is where I talk about games. I will keep it very light on spoilers. I have been that spiteful person that continues to read/watch/listen past the spoiler warning, and I’ve often regretted it, so I refuse to actually spoil this game in full.
So what is Void Stranger? For those uninitiated, it's a 2D sokoban puzzle game. Sokoban is a genre that stems from the 1982 title of the same name, where the goal was to push around boxes in a warehouse. What you need to understand from this description is that everything is on a grid, including the player. Think Minecraft in 2D, but you can only move in increments of 1 block. Some more notable games in the same vein are 2019’s ‘Baba is You,’ and 2016’s ‘Stephen’s Sausage Roll.’ Sokoban games focus on creating puzzles in these grid like environments, usually with a gimmick that restructures the already existing format of Sokoban. In Stephen’s Sausage Roll, it's the fork. In Baba is You, it's how objects are defined in the space of play. And in Void Stranger, it's moving around the environment with a wand. It's these limitations that help Sokoban games to focus on their puzzles, as opposed to other titles that are games WITH puzzles, not puzzle games. The simple structure of Sokoban games (which oftentimes don’t have much more than four directional input) that allows the designer to hand craft situations to test the players wits, without having to account for a myriad of variables.
As far as structure in puzzle games go, I find it hard for a game to juggle narrative and gameplay in a coherent way. The easiest way I can describe this is by looking at various puzzle games and seeing which they decide to focus on. Tetris is a arcade-y puzzle game with no story, yet elegantly designed gameplay. Baba is You is the same, where there is no overarching narrative connecting the puzzles. These games are able to achieve good puzzles by not worrying about telling a narrative at all and just focusing on mechanics. Then you have games like the Portal series where the gimmicks behind the puzzles are fun to interact with, but the puzzles are kinda shit. However, I think these games are great (in particular Portal 1) because they use the premise of solving puzzles to create an interesting story. It also helps the pacing of the story, since the player isn’t very likely to get stuck on a hard puzzle (the puzzles are really easy). This approach is easy to see in playtime as well. The Portal games can easily be beaten in one sitting (I did so with both on my first playthroughs), yet the harder puzzle games might require hours for a single puzzle.
Now to be clear, I don’t think it is a fault of any of the mentioned games. They focus on only one of the two aspects mentioned and I like both approaches. I mainly bring this up to highlight that Void Stranger is able to do both. It's not that Void Stranger has a good story with a good puzzle game slapped on, or vice versa, but that they aid each other to elevate the whole experience.
It's here where I would like to interject with another spoiler warning, but with a bit more explanation as to why you should go play, as opposed to just saying go play. If you like hard puzzle games, you will probably like Void Stranger. If you like games with good stories, and are willing to put up with difficult puzzles, you will probably like Void Stranger. But most important to the discussion of spoilers, if you like what I would call “Mechanical Learning” games (some people call these Metroid-Branias) such as Outer Wilds, TUNIC, or Her Story, you will probably like Void Stranger. If you’ve played any of those titles, then I think you can begin to understand why the community surrounding this game is so careful with its spoilers.
It's this last element of design that allows for the game to intertwin gameplay and narrative so elegantly. This is because of how these “Mechanical Learning” games work. They operate in the design space that we might call ‘Meta’ gaming. Where part of the game is designed to interact with the player to a certain extent. Puzzles for the sake of puzzles can be boring, and yet, a game with a really good story that is constantly interrupted by tons of gameplay might also be considered to have bad pacing. It’s through this interactive part of the game that players that are attracted to both types of puzzle games can become more easily invested. When done correctly, meta stuff is often among the best stories games have to offer, mostly because of how unique it is to the medium of video games. Likewise, by incorporating these story elements into the game (as opposed to more and more cutscenes, exposition dumps, and item descriptions that modern games love to use) you actually get the benefit of having your story be directly tied to gameplay.
Void Stranger is a game where your understanding of it will be reshaped over and over as you continue to progress through the game. When you start the game for the first time, following a settings screen, you’ll be presented the opportunity to draw your own brand. This, along with the “inscription” you can inspect in the first room of the game, seem very obtuse and archaic by design. If you’re like me, these are the kinds of details that will stick out in your mind as you progress, wondering what purpose they serve, and why the devs so intentionally stuck them at the very beginning. It's this sort of prodding at your imagination that Void Stranger excels at. It's a game that rewards your observation with progress on larger mysteries found in the void. If these details elude you however, it will become immediately apparent that not everything is what it seems down here upon your first death. For most this will happen early on, so I don’t feel it's too big a spoiler, but essentially the game directly asks you to make a choice regarding how to proceed. This choice does have significance, but realization of what that significance is won’t happen until much later.
It's the process of learning new ways to interact with your environment that I love in these games. Learning new tricks by testing hypotheses is such a cool way to reward player curiosity. There isn’t much more to say about the meta elements without fully discussing spoilers. For me at least, they were really fun to interact with, and I had many “Holy Shit”, jaw on the floor moments. At least 5, which might be the most any individual game has had me in that mindset. I LOVED Void Stranger during these moments. Trying to piece together progression on a larger scale than individual puzzle rooms was just plain fun. I cannot praise this aspect of the game enough.
If you’ll allow a hard segway, the puzzles can be really difficult. Especially the “post-credit” content I found to be really hard when I “fully engaged” with it. This is the one reason why I’m hesitant to recommend Void Stranger to everyone. I’m really grateful I did all the hardest puzzles, as there is a good pay off at the end of all the content, and I really felt a sense of accomplishment by overcoming it. I think there was only one puzzle that I found to be unfair in the entire game, and that was the only time I had to consult a guide. I would consider that a success. It's very hard to talk about a puzzle game’s puzzles without visual cues, and without giving away the ‘a-ha’ moments where you begin to understand how to interact with simple mechanics, so all I can say was that I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The story, although simple, I found to be really compelling. It gets better the more you put into it, so I would highly recommend trying to find all narrative content. There was one scene in particular that had me nearly well up, and I think it was well earned. The Mother-Daughter dynamic feels fully fleshed out, although I can’t really dive too far in without more spoilers. As someone who doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with their parents, I found myself re-evaluating my own relationships thanks to this game. I don’t think I can give much more praise to a story than saying that it has affected me outside of my playtime, so I will leave it there for my thoughts on the game.
Miscellaneous thoughts that didn’t fit into the script:
The sound track is phenomenal. Like seriously, not just good, great.
I love the atmosphere in the game. I think it's easiest to feel when you walk into a ‘tree room’, but I love how it adapts as you find more secrets. Coming to an understanding of where you actually are, and what that place is, is hinted at far before you reach an actual explanation which I found to be really cool.
I loved all the little moments with NPC’s. This game doesn’t have sprawling prose or flashy use of figurative language, but I thought that all the writing was fitting for all the characters. That’s really all you need to be successful, and I’m glad that it was so focused. Not everything can be a Disco Elysium or a Planescape: Torment, and to be honest, not everything should be.
If you read this, thank you. Play Void Stranger.
2 Comments
Problem with well considered reviews such as these is I have a tendency to seek them out only after I have experienced the game myself.
Consciovs
5 months ago