The void is a game developed Ice-Pick Lodge, most famous for developing Pathologic 1 and 2. This is their second game after their first, Pathologic. As you might assume from these dev's this game is hostile to the player. The world is dreary and abandoned (for the most part), and the gameplay is stressful, tedious, and has consequences for playing poorly.
This game tasks you with collecting color in a world basically devoid of it. You must collect color, and grow it in gardens, or mine it from ore deposits, maybe even find scraps; but mostly you will be farming. You fill a tree with color and it will give you color over a couple "cycles", and then once its empty, you cannot use that tree for quite a while. Not understanding how this fully worked, I borked my first 5 hours into this game and basically had to start a new playthrough.
I started again, however, because the ambience, vibe, and visuals of this game are crazy. Each sister has their own unique worlds that are so beautiful I just stood there and looked for a while. The small areas you get to explore kind of remind of Hypnagogia, just like small dream-like locations that exist. The cutscenes, dialogue, and everything just make me go "woah. This is fucking Video Games."
Sadly, I also abandoned this run because the gameplay becomes too tedious, and I kind of just really didn't wanna start the game up to play it whenever I thought about it. At first, the gameplay is engaging because you are managing your colors, trying to grow them without growing too much. At that point I only played small sessions because it taxed my brain quite a lot, couldn't handle longer sessions. Eventually though I got to the point where you can start fighting the primary antagonists, the 10 Brothers. I was following a guide and was way ahead power curve wise, so I got like 6 of them before the game tells you to do it. Then I realized I have all I need except to fight the final boss, except you have to wait until the 30th cycle to fight him, which was 9 away, which is a long time. I just gave up cause I didn't wanna jack my pud for 9 cycles, I get what the game is and I think its too tedious at this point.
Despite that, I still think this game is something you can only create in this medium. This is a game that fucking shows you what Video Games™ can be.
This game tasks you with collecting color in a world basically devoid of it. You must collect color, and grow it in gardens, or mine it from ore deposits, maybe even find scraps; but mostly you will be farming. You fill a tree with color and it will give you color over a couple "cycles", and then once its empty, you cannot use that tree for quite a while. Not understanding how this fully worked, I borked my first 5 hours into this game and basically had to start a new playthrough.
I started again, however, because the ambience, vibe, and visuals of this game are crazy. Each sister has their own unique worlds that are so beautiful I just stood there and looked for a while. The small areas you get to explore kind of remind of Hypnagogia, just like small dream-like locations that exist. The cutscenes, dialogue, and everything just make me go "woah. This is fucking Video Games."
Sadly, I also abandoned this run because the gameplay becomes too tedious, and I kind of just really didn't wanna start the game up to play it whenever I thought about it. At first, the gameplay is engaging because you are managing your colors, trying to grow them without growing too much. At that point I only played small sessions because it taxed my brain quite a lot, couldn't handle longer sessions. Eventually though I got to the point where you can start fighting the primary antagonists, the 10 Brothers. I was following a guide and was way ahead power curve wise, so I got like 6 of them before the game tells you to do it. Then I realized I have all I need except to fight the final boss, except you have to wait until the 30th cycle to fight him, which was 9 away, which is a long time. I just gave up cause I didn't wanna jack my pud for 9 cycles, I get what the game is and I think its too tedious at this point.
Despite that, I still think this game is something you can only create in this medium. This is a game that fucking shows you what Video Games™ can be.