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The Void - An adventure/role-playing/after-life/painting/horror/survival/dating game
Clevinger
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Platforms: PC
Release Date: Out now in the US and the UK
The Void is now on Gamersgate!
AND STEAM!
* Here it is on Amazon UK People in the US can import the game NSFWhereNSFW from the publisher's website.
Fuck. How am I going to explain this game?
Just like SomethingAwful's amazing Pathologic Let's Play, someone there has started a Let's Play for The Void. So far it's enjoyable and informative, so if you want to see what the game is like, that's a perfect place to start.
Rock Paper Shotgun has a much better explanation/review than mine. You can read it here.
First, you may remember Pathologic, which was a surreal first person adventure game set in a small town that’s facing a plague epidemic. It was great and weird and unique and ambitious and atmospheric and mistranslated and creepy and hard-as-fuck and buggy. It was the very definition of a rough gem. Rock Paper Shotgun did a great three-part write up of the game here, here, and here. I strongly suggest you read it. There’s also a really great Let’s Play of it over at Something Awful that I also strongly suggest you read if it sounds interesting at all, because it’s much more interesting than I am able to describe.
Now the developer, Ice Pick Lodge, a very small Russian team, is about to release its second game named “The Void” in English and it is fucking weird. Like, so weird I’m having trouble making this thread to tell you about it.
In the game you have just died and your soul travels to a bleak purgatory-ish place called The Void. In this place of sorrow, grey and hopelessness, there’s only one thing that all its inhabitants hunger for and value; colour. In The Void, colour is life, it’s food, it’s a weapon, it’s a gift, and it’s poison. In The Void, you use colour for everything. It’s a limited resource, and there seems to be less and less of it as time goes on, which seems to be leading up to an apocalyptic event in the game (can the afterlife have an apocalypse? GOD THIS GAME IS WEIRD). If you’re wondering what it actually looks like, it’s these little ghostly plants of different colors that you pick up.
In gameplay terms, you must search the dead world for colour and collect it. You need colour to live in the game, and when you run out you die. When you put a certain colour in your ethereal body, that colour is basically an RPG stat. Red makes your attacks stronger, blue makes you faster, yellow makes you lucky, green makes enemies’ attacks less effective etc. Colour is constantly leaking out of you, so that’s where the survival aspect kicks in. You’re always on the hunt for this resource.
See that sad looking fellow above? That’s you in the game. See those colorful organ-looking things? Those are called hearts in the Void, and that’s where you store the colour you find.
You also use colour to, for lack of a better term, cast spells. Casting spells uses a gesture system akin to Black & White where you draw symbols with your mouse. You use spells to attack enemies and defend yourself, and also use spells related to finding and giving colour.
To progress in the game, you need to give colour to the women of The Void, who are called “Sisters”, for information (you’re more or less a baby in this new world, ignorant to all) and passage to go further into the world, and also for the ability to carry more colour in your body and obtain new spells. The men of the world, called “Brothers”, don’t like this much. I believe each brother is paired to a sister, and they’re the bosses of the game. They get pissed off when you talk to or give colour to their sister, and they might hunt after you and kick your ass. And I believe they guard certain areas you need to go. The brothers look like what the monsters from Silent Hill might have nightmares of.
So, if it’s so weird and complicated, why am I talking about the game? Well, for one thing, its atmosphere and art direction are amazing. Just fucking amazing. It looks and feels like some awful and beautiful dream I had but can’t remember.
Second, the music in the game is equally amazing. Third, I love these types of games. Not only these ambitious and strange games from small developers, but fantasy games that are truly fantastic and not just a different coat of paint on elves and dwarves. And this is the type of game that will get no marketing or hype whatsoever and bomb. Oh, and the gameplay’s pretty neat and inspired as well. It’s just hard and unforgiving.
Some screens:
Here are some gameplay videos and trailers and such. Keep in mind that each might contain nudity in the form of pixelated nipples and/or vaginas.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ-FvuzPrgk
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m402AQQ8Dfw
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp5HNLDCyI0
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0XprIY71SY
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg43qAHnAPo
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
I repeat, NSFW videos.
*whew*
The first English review I've found. NSFW (has a screenshot of a breast)
There is a bug for the 4000 (and perhaps 5000) series of ATI cards where mines in the game are invisible. Disabling antialiasing will fix this.
Clevinger on
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Also, I have no idea what the fuck is going on in those videos. Sure does look like a crazy dream though.
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If I had more English stuff to post, I would. Sorry about that.
Hopefully this will be a tad more polished for a Western release.
Twitter
Ditto.
Thanks for making this OP, I may not have noticed this game otherwise.
And I've tried the russian version of The Void. It's weirder than Pathologic and probably just as hard but at least it's somewhat polished this time. It was too hard and weird for me.
All I understood was "pixelated nipples and/or vaginas", which is enough to get me interested.
Interesting... And I really should read that Pathalogic LP, I read enough other ones there.
I don't think there are puzzles in either game.
Pathologic was hard because it was about as harsh as its setting - you were a doctor in a town facing plague. You have to manage your health each day, which included levels of infection and fatigue and hunger. You also had to make sure a group of seven or so people don't die each day if they are infected. Then there are the quests. There's one main quest each day, and if you don't finish it by midnight, game over. Usually it wasn't too hard to accomplish, but the game was translated to English horribly, so instructions for the quests were often times muddled.
The Void is hard, from what I gather from playing the Russian version and hearing impressions, because it's very much a survival game. Like Pathologic, the developers make the game as hard as its setting - you're a dead soul who travels to a purgatory-like place where you and all the other souls are ravenous for this one scarce resource. And you use this resource in the game for everything. There's also some randomization with the spells you might get and the colour you might find that makes the game harder and, again, the developers aren't afraid to go, "You died. Start over, bitch." The Russian title of the game is "Tension," so that gives you another idea of the mood they were going for. I don't know how much the difficulty will be changed in our version, because the English version will be the "director's cut" of the game that was released in Russia a year after the original.
I will say that The Void is infinitely more fun to play than Pathologic.
Also, any good unofficial patches/translations I should check out when/if I find it?
Here you go
Re: Translation. They were working on some kind of patch, but I don't think it ever materialized.
www.pathologic-game.com/path_walkthrough_eng.pdf
There's also a "general advice" section in it that would be good to follow, from what I remember.
Bookmarked, thanks.
Even though the Bachelor is the "easiest", I'm probably going to play the Haru my first time, since I can't stop reading the Bachelor's LP.
I'll let you know how it goes. Might even start a thread on it, since there isn't one already.
That bums me out, I was really interested in learning her side of the story (especially since from what I've read, it's hinted that she is the only char who gets to go inside the Apiary). Is there any decent write up of her story I can read when I finish a playthrough?
But,
I don't know about a plot summary for the devotress. If you really want it that bad, you could go to Ice Pick Lodge's forums and ask one of the developers if he could summarize it for you. One developer you could ask is named The LxR on the forum, and he's a nice fellow who would likely help you if he has the time. Or maybe start a topic asking the fans for it. They're also nice people who would likely help.
A russian guy in the Something Awful Let's Play thread has already played through, wrote and translated an entire playthrough of the Devotress part of the story. He's waiting for the guy doing the Doctor to finish his.
Or drop into Nightmare, the other afterlife below the one you're in. The one the Brothers came from, in reward for their good behavior. They consider this afterlife to be their awesome Paradise, so Nightmare probably kind of sucks!