Ultra Void

Short version: Ultra Void is a simple little minesweeper-like with a roguelite meta progression system. The concept has been done before and more thoroughly (Demon Crawl), but Ultra Void offers a unique spin on the mechanics and has incredible theme and atmosphere. I highly recommend the game, especially for the price. I ended up getting seven hours of fun out of the game with the potential to go back and play it more, but that’s probably more than average. A normal run will probably take somewhere between 1-3 hours depending on how methodical you are, and there isn’t anything cool you get for completing multiple runs, so it’s really just how long you keep enjoying the mechanics. Long version: The theme of this game is amazing and is what will really sell it for you since the gameplay is fairly simple. The store page does a pretty good job summarizing it, but basically you are the crew of a mining ship investigating a supermassive black hole. You want to try and find a way to save the descendants of humanity as the heat death of the universe inexorably counts down. The gameplay is reverse minesweeper. You’re trying to hit all the mines within a limited number of moves. It really messed with my muscle memory at first since I am a ok (not great) minesweeper player, but I got used to it pretty quick. Every time you beat a level you get some meta progression currency that you can exchange for upgrades once you end your run. The gameplay loop is: go to the black hole, play reverse minesweeper until you are struggling to clear the progressively larger levels, go back home, buy some upgrades, go back to the black hole and start at level one again, repeat until you clear all the levels. There’s a little more to it but that’s basically it. The theme is the game’s strongest point. You get log entries for game mechanics and story/lore (I wish there were more of these, but what’s there is great). I love the more hopeful look at humanity it offers. Something descended from humans is still around and fighting entropy (and apparently eating ramen) right up until the last stars go out, and even after. Speaking of stars going out, it gets to the really big hook of the game. Due to gravitational time dilation every second you spend at the black hole counts for significantly longer in the rest of the universe, so you have to finish the game fast if you want to save the rest of humanity. The game really hammers home that the universe is on a clock since the visuals get slowly darker and more depressing as the stars go out until eventually it’s just your mining ships floating in an empty void. There is no strict time limit on the game, and you can spend as much time as you want going slowly and methodically, but at least for me the visuals of the fading universe and desire to save the rest of humanity in the lore really made me want to pick up the pace. This is one of those “if you’re having fun you’re doing it right” things, so the feeling of time pressure may not apply to you. I enjoyed the self-imposed time pressure, but it did make me play the game differently once I figured out what was going on. Instead of challenging myself with difficult levels of minesweeper I mostly maximized my meta currency gain by doing short runs and prestigeing once I stopped being able to solve the levels in a couple seconds. Eventually you can buy the endgame upgrades that let you solve every level in a few seconds, so you beat the game at that point. Thanks for reading, have a great day.