Considering I like Sokoban puzzle games and a friend gave this title a glowing recommendation, I was excited to have something to take a deep dive into over my holiday break. Unfortunately, I was met with an incredibly frustrating experience that ultimately I couldn't force myself to continue.
Most of the allure of this game seems to be the layered mystery aspect, but I think that does a disservice to describing the actual play experience. Not like the game hides that it is a Sokoban puzzler, but I do not think it does this job well at all. Instead of being focused on the puzzles like most in this genre, it just uses them as moment-to-moment gameplay. One consequence of this is that there is no "undo" as is pretty much standard in the genre, and this game actually takes that a step further by punishing you for failing too many times.
Personally I find it beyond infuriating to have my progress wiped in games, and this one seems to do that practically all the time. This wouldn't be as annoying if it were simply an exploration or action game, because at least the gameplay in those cases is either simple enough or varied enough on replayed sections. No, this is a puzzle game where every room can be solved the exact same way every time (yes I know there's probably some shit that changes it at some point but I didn't even make it to anything interesting like that in my 20 hrs). Oh, and don't act like you're going to actually remember the solutions to hundreds of puzzles. Puzzles that, I will add to conclude this rant, feel like guess and check in too many cases and often have way too verbose solutions even when you understand the core ideas.
Void Stranger to me is an extreme case of a game that doesn't respect your time at all. I feel like I've wasted mine, and according those that parade it the only way to fix that is to play more. Except that when I do that, I get pissed off in like 15 minutes. I'm folding on this one, I might just do some reading to see what I missed.
Most of the allure of this game seems to be the layered mystery aspect, but I think that does a disservice to describing the actual play experience. Not like the game hides that it is a Sokoban puzzler, but I do not think it does this job well at all. Instead of being focused on the puzzles like most in this genre, it just uses them as moment-to-moment gameplay. One consequence of this is that there is no "undo" as is pretty much standard in the genre, and this game actually takes that a step further by punishing you for failing too many times.
Personally I find it beyond infuriating to have my progress wiped in games, and this one seems to do that practically all the time. This wouldn't be as annoying if it were simply an exploration or action game, because at least the gameplay in those cases is either simple enough or varied enough on replayed sections. No, this is a puzzle game where every room can be solved the exact same way every time (yes I know there's probably some shit that changes it at some point but I didn't even make it to anything interesting like that in my 20 hrs). Oh, and don't act like you're going to actually remember the solutions to hundreds of puzzles. Puzzles that, I will add to conclude this rant, feel like guess and check in too many cases and often have way too verbose solutions even when you understand the core ideas.
Void Stranger to me is an extreme case of a game that doesn't respect your time at all. I feel like I've wasted mine, and according those that parade it the only way to fix that is to play more. Except that when I do that, I get pissed off in like 15 minutes. I'm folding on this one, I might just do some reading to see what I missed.