Void Bastards

[h1]Summary[/h1] Definitely a fun romp with great visual style, absurdist humor, forgettable story and simple, but compelling gameplay. Lacks staying power, but depending on your economy, is likely still worth the price of admission. On sale: Absolute must-buy! 10-20 hours of gameplay unless you are one of those who fall absolutely in love with it. I find the gameplay to be a bit too repetitive to have staying power beyond finishing it once. [h1]Detailed review[/h1] [h2]Visual style, graphics, performance[/h2] Disclaimer: Played on Arch Linux Excellent art style that works extremely well with its "comic book"-esque storytelling. Graphics are simple, but crisp and gives a lovely old-school vibe with the 8-directional sprites, yet gameplay feels refreshingly modern. Performance was solid. Had to turn on vsync to stop my GPU from screaming (over-rendering thousands of frames) and not a single freeze, stutter or crash during my entire playthrough. [h2]Sound, music and general audio[/h2] Music fits the style well, but it can get a bit repetitive at times. You are spared most of it as music pops in and out at suitable places in gameplay. Overall solid. Sounds are meaty and effective and I feel nothing really feels like you're confused about audio in general. You can easily tell what each sound is after a couple of hours of gameplay, and the game features stellar voice acting and some really advanced audio processing for such a simple game. Closed doors will muffle sound, but you can still mostly make out what's going on in adjacent rooms. My one gripe is probably that voice lines easily get drowned out by the cacaphony of combat, leading to you missing a lot of enemy barks. Main story is told by the Stanley Parable narrator, and I don't think I need to say he's excellent here too. [h2]Story and gameplay[/h2] [h3]Gameplay[/h3] The gameplay is very solid. This is not a "shoot everything", doom-style roguelite by any means. This is more like Darkest Dungeon where you get to choose very carefully what vessels to visit, what weapons to bring and sometimes you're stuck with a subpar combo of enemies and weapons, simply because you ran out of resources. On the harder difficulties this can become almost excessively punishing and you end up in a death spiral of never gaining enough food, fuel, ammo or health in order to get more food, fuel ammo or health. But it is the hardest for a reason. It has a decent amount of weapons and gadgets for you to unlock and at first, they feel varied and solid, but once you've put 10 or so hours in you'll find that you'll be sticking to a "standard" setup for almost every single ship, aside from some outliers where you'll bring a specific gun/tool to deal with. This may be down to difficulty and it may be more required to pick specific loadouts to specific scenarios on harder difficulties, but even on Hard Bastard, I didn't feel like I either needed, or could, bring specifics, since you're extremely limited in ammunition and resources on higher difficulties. After about 17 hours I have beaten the "main" story and feel rather done with the experience. Out of all the difficulties, I found "Normal" to be a the sweet-spot for "fun" vs "grind". Harder difficulties force you into a much more careful playstyle, but you are always on a time limit due to the oxygen system, which means that even though you have to be careful, you have to hurry as much as possible. Mistakes and unnecessary confrontation is punished hard on the higher difficulties, and almost inconsequential on lower difficulties. Hence why I felt "Normal" was the sweet spot. If I'd ever play through again I would likely turn it up just a notch to Hard, just to challenge myself. Hard Bastard was manageable, but too punishing for me and I don't have the patience to really sit down and become an expert at this game. Which brings me to my next point: [h3]Longevity and lack of variety[/h3] This game has very little staying power. It is not a "forever" game, in spite of its roguelite elements. You are not meant to unlock stuff, fail and then start over again with your unlocks still in place. Sure, your current client may die, but you lose ALL your ammo, food and fuel, while retaining parts and crafting resources, as well as all your unlocks. This makes it a weird blend between roguelikes and roguelites. After you beat the game once, there is a challenge mode for those who feel Hard Bastard wasn't enough, but I felt that with the overly repetitive gameplay, it doesn't suit the game with such a "rince & repeat" style of gameplay. I am very happy with my one playthrough, but I doubt I'll be back anytime soon. Depending on your speed and proficiency at video games, this will happily bring you between 10-20 hours of gameplay and I think that's honestly perfect. It might rub some people the wrong way, seeing as it markets itself as a roguelite and those tend to have near limitless replayability, but this one does lack in that department, mainly due to a very small scope of ships, enemies and mechanics. What is here is extremely well crafted, carefully balanced and offers a splendid experience. Just be prepared that it is not a forever-experience. [h3]Story[/h3] The game sets itself in a giga-dark,ultra-authoritarian hyper-dystopian universe but tackles it through the lens of absurdist humor. This lands, for the most part, but I feel a whole lot of the universe's dark and twisted worldbuilding gets lost in the thick layer or absurdist humor through which everything is told. It [i]is[/i] funny, don't get me wrong, and the announcements, enemy barks, snippets of texts and posters all offer an insight into a horrible, horrible universe, which is fun to explore. I just feel that the darkness is too heavily undermined by the absurdism. But it still kinda works? I dunno, this is a point I find myself waggling on. Overall it's a positive, even if the story is very forgettable and highly unsatisfying in terms of resolve. It's not helped by the fact that the character you play as is really expendable and is little more than a collection of traits. But hey, that's more than can be said for MANY roguelikes/-lites so I mean, at least there's some personality there.

It's okay. Graphics are really cool, but gameplay is tedious. I went for like 4-5 playthrough and I gave up. If there ever was a game for a neutral review, it's this one...

Very challenging game but still pretty enjoyable on the rogue like style, due a lot of random traits that can affect your game, and i liked the graphics!

Fun game, maybe worth closer to $20 than 30, but it's a fun roguelike FTL FPS type thingy none the less. Fairly funny and nice cell shading art style. It can get a bit repetitive, I wish there were more variations in ships/enemies but good nonetheless.

Probably one of the most under-rated roguelikes i've ever played. Plenty of progression and customisation systems, just a pity it seems to have flown right under the radar.

Note DOES NOT WORK ON MAC LIKE IT SAYS IT DOES Great game on windows though

I hate the visual style, it actually pains me to look at for very long. ..But the actual gameplay loop is compelling, it makes me more interested in games of this type, unlike Ziggurat.