Backtracking from that article to the ones on Pathalogic, I feel a great sense of loss deep within me for what appears to be a truly exquisite game that I will never play. I mean, when even the game's biggest fan can't finish the last third of it and warns you off the whole experience it's clearly best to just avoid inevitable frustration and not even start the venture. Maybe one day that re-translation project will happen. One day...
Even if it did, the game mechanics are about as rough as the old translation. I would recommend reading the Something Awful Let's Play linked in the opening post. It's excellent.
The game has gone gold and you can (at least according to a PR dude of the publisher) pre-order it with free shipping up until October 1st from **the page is NFSW, as it's got an image of a breast in it from the trailer.**here***. I would assume this only applies to people in Europe, but I'm sure you can contact them and ask if it's available for shipping in the US as well.
I took the plunge on this one and went ahead and ordered it. It would seem that shipping to the US is, in fact, free; this is also supported by the Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments thread on the game. So now would seem to be the time to order, if you want a hard copy.
it's been a while since I bought a game (I only bought Mirrors Edge and Guilty Gear XXAC last year...)
but this is pre-ordered. I was pretty into pathologic and remember being rather moved by that guys Rock Paper Shotgun article on it. I trust his recommendation.
Im the Commercial Director of Mamba Games, publisher of the Void in Europe! Hope your all good! We are pleased to say that we have now extended the FREE DELIVERY OPTION for another week off our website since the take up has been great!
So, this will now finish on the 10th October - this includes all our products, so if you buy 3 you save a lot of money especially from the USA/Japan and Australia!
A reminder to all those in the US (and elsewhere) who wanted to import. The free shipping offer from the publisher's website ends tomorrow. The link is at the top of the OP.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
It's hard to explain. It doesn't "feel" like a game; the translation's sloppy, your goals are hard to figure out at first, and things are weird and not really explained at all at first. It really felt more like a fever dream to me, like I had this feeling that whatever I was playing was just...I don't know, WRONG, somehow. And I loved it. I can honestly say you won't get an experience like this from any other game, definitely. Just as I was starting to get a grip on the game, I walked around a corner to see a woman being burned alive in front of a crowd of onlookers, and when she died, they all just walked off minding their own business, and it legitimately disturbed me. I had just witnessed something that should not have happened, and there was no explanation given for it.
Two hours of gameplay later you're trading bullets for food and bandages, to give you an idea of the importance of just staying alive. The town itself is more likely to kill you than anything in it.
Is it at least playable or will I need to fight it just to get through it? What did people (who actually enjoyed it) complain most about it?
What broke the experience to me was the repetitive gameplay and lack of meaningful choices. As far as I know, each characters story is pretty much entirely linear, which made the sometimes harsh choices you make feel a lot less meaningful to me. As for the gameplay, at least two thirds of my playtime was spent running through the maze-like streets. The fact that you are not always given proper directions and there was no real way of knowing where today's main and side "quests" would start meant that every in-game day had me running past every named character in the game, usually more than once. No matter how atmospheric a place is, there is a limit to how long you can spend running through it before it loses its charm.
The game certainly had its moments and I am glad I tried it, but I doubt I could bring myself to finish it. I have a kind of dream that one day I could be some way involved in the making of a game inspired by Pathologic, using a similar story and atmosphere but with branching storylines and fast-travel between locations.
2Lord Jezo: The game requires a lot of patience, and you need to want to understand the game. If these two conditions meet, you'll soon find that you can look past the flaws. We have some devoted players on our forums who completed the game with no problems even though the translation is somewhat mangled, and the gameplay is grave difficult. Also, if you're stuck, I've translated a full walkthrough in English. Here's the link:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
There was an Amazon seller claiming to be shipping there and then, so maybe someone got their hands on a shipment. I've ordered it from Play UK, but they won't ship 'til Monday. Fingers crossed.
Eight Rooks on
<AtlusParker> Sorry I'm playing Pokemon and vomiting at the same time so I'm not following the conversation in a linear fashion.
Guys, I have some bad news. For some reason we're still looking into the bonuses didn't make it to the game disk - possibly, because the publisher used a DVD5 instead of DVD9 and cut the bonuses. But, I assure you - I'm making an official torrent with all the bonus content and even some more that didn't make it into the master disk in time.
The torrent will be available on the game's official site at http://www.tension-game.com/ free of charge, as well as the Russian voiceovers.
Sorry for the misinformation, this was a total surprise for me too.
The LxR on
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Hmmm... I hate to follow that generous post with whining, but Jesus, this is even more murderously hard than Pathologic, and the translation's still not that great. I appreciate this isn't going for the games-as-fun angle and I really, really admire that - it's one reason why I'm honestly happy to pay for the thing even if I never finish it, because more developers should be willing to take wild risks, not to mention punish their fanbase - but I can't help but wonder if this isn't going a little too far. I stretch to the absolute limit satisfying the first Sister, then I find out I have to give the second almost as much again before I can even open her damn levels, and they both want at least one colour that doesn't even exist yet? It feels impossible. Not I'm-sure-there-must-be-a-way-to-do-this 'impossible', just impossible. I can see the official forums are discussing all kinds of advanced play tips, but on the one hand the manual's difficult enough to understand as it is, and on the other none of them suggest how I can get past this.
Still a beautiful game, though. Uta's chamber... wow. Almost worth it just to see something like that.
Eight Rooks on
<AtlusParker> Sorry I'm playing Pokemon and vomiting at the same time so I'm not following the conversation in a linear fashion.
Rooks, you should go here and ask for help/tips and detail your problem exactly, because I played the Russian version and got fairly far and didn't have anywhere near the trouble you seem to have. To me, it was nowhere near as hard or tedious to play as Pathologic.
Already read several pages of the official forums, and (predictably) the people who post there seem to be the intended niche audience who pick up the gameplay concepts instantly and have absolutely no problem with any of it. I've seen a few 'what am I doing wrong?' topics and while the regulars seem like nice, helpful sorts, their advice does pretty much boil down to 'learn to play'. I understand the basic concepts, I just suspect 1) I don't believe they hang together as well as they could and 2) I don't find it much fun - the mere fact that if you sit on the world map and do nothing after coming out of the tutorial, you're dead in about fifteen seconds should probably have clued me in.
Pathologic let you wander around and experiment. This doesn't. Second proper attempt I took six rounds to get to the second sister and satisfy her, and much of that time was just spent sitting on the world map waiting for a timer to count down. I can't see anything else to do, I can't get it to go any faster (speeding up time doesn't alter how many rounds it takes to do something)...
Understand I'm not trying to say the game's rubbish, give me my money back, so forth. I can very easily see how the intended hardcore niche would go utterly nuts over this, I accept there's lots to love and I would agree it raises some really, really valuable questions about game design that most developers wouldn't even dream of implementing. At the same time I'm just not sure making games 'not fun' as in PLAY CORRECTLY! TOO SLOW! YOU'RE SCREWED! DO IT AGAIN! etc., etc. is quite the way to go. I wish I could enjoy The Void, because I can certainly see how it's possible, but I'm starting to feel pretty strongly that something like Demon's Souls is a far better example of how to accomplish a lot of the same design goals without crushing the player right from the word go.
Eight Rooks on
<AtlusParker> Sorry I'm playing Pokemon and vomiting at the same time so I'm not following the conversation in a linear fashion.
Okay, really, sincerely loving this game. Atmosphere and "tone" are just so far beyond what virtually anything out there has tried.
But two things.
One, how the heck can I get my gestures to be more consistent? I appear to blow my Donor glyphs about 60% of the time. "You should have used a Donor glyph. Now some of your colour is wasted in vain."
Except the tree seems to have grown, and yields plenty of colour?
Second question would be, what/where am I supposed to find a "better" solution for dealing with Predators? Just blasting them with colour's no good, I'm gathering. Or does that mean I'm supposed to use a more "efficient" combat spell on them instead?
I guess the overall question is... How the heck do I NOT waste so much colour? Its wierd to have Sister Death yell at me for blowing so much, and getting swarmed....
2Eight Rooks: Just out of interest — what can possibly be wrong with this translation? It was proofread in several waves with three professional natively English-speaking writers.
As for the game being hardcore — maybe, just maybe, we went a little overboard. I can only calm you by saying that our next game is going to be a lot more relaxing and fun, while at the same time we're not lowering the bar and there will be plenty of food for reflection in it.
Also, I'm concidering making a simplification patch for the Void, but it's certainly not going to make the game more fun — you're supposed to feel like your soul close to dead in it — and it feels exactly so!
2Teyar: >> Except the tree seems to have grown, and yields plenty of colour?
The trees only give 80% of the Color they can give, when you mess up the Donor glyph, but it shouldn't be a problem. Also - do you have a widescreen monitor? I'm starting to think that's the problem for half of the mis-recognitions of the Donor. Try drawing it as large as possible.
>>Second question would be, what/where am I supposed to find a "better" solution for dealing with Predators? Just blasting them with colour's no good, I'm gathering. Or does that mean I'm supposed to use a more "efficient" combat spell on them instead?
The game doesn't encourage you to fight predators and
there will be a penalty for killing too many later in the game - nothing too hard, but I felt like I should warn you
. Your best choice would be to unlock new locations and to search for new Glyphs - one of them may as well be a combat Glyph.
Also - Sister Death will blame you for spending color either way, just mind your status.
A small tip: if you feel like running out of Color, you can fill just one Heart and leave the rest empty, as when you have two hearts converting Color at the same time, you have twice as less time to live.
2Everyone: * in Futurama professor voice *
Good news, everyone! The official The Void bonus torrent is up and ready for downloading!
Inside you will find almost everything of interest that was created during development:
— The complete original soundtrack in four virtual disks contains all the tracks that made it into the game, all unreleased tracks that didn't make it into the game for some reason, poems and mantras and re-mastered tracks for the English edition of the game.
— 6 trailers including the earliest gameplay trailer, 2 videos from KRI (Russian GDC) and a Game Music Video from Pathologic by Halfgild Wynac.
— Almost all the artwork and concepts from the game, even in print quality! The Void poster anyone? ;o)
— Know Russian? Then you'll find the three lectures on game design by Nikolay Dybowskiy read at KRI most interesting! As well as a video interview for the LKI magazine.
PS: Oh yeah, and of course let me know, what you think about it.
The LxR on
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Inside you will find almost everything of interest that was created during development:
— The complete original soundtrack in four virtual disks contains all the tracks that made it into the game, all unreleased tracks that didn't make it into the game for some reason, poems and mantras and re-mastered tracks for the English edition of the game.
You need to open the game folder, find the data subfolder and create a file named rcfg.xml there. (C:\Program Files\bitcomposer\The Void\Data) Open it in any text editor and write the following code:
Enter your desired X resolution between the <Width> tags and the Y resolution between the <Height> tags. Other tags are self-explanatory and modify correspondent settings. This configuration will launch the game in 1680x1050 resolution, with 8x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic texture filtering. Texture and lighting quality is at maximum, HDR is turned on.
note: there's a bug regarding mines with ATI cards. disabling anti-alliasing fixes it.
I just got this game, and I have to say that it's pretty fucking great. It reminds me a lot of Pathologic in that in nails the atmosphere and is uncompromising in its visions, which I love. I haven't had any problems with the translation either. In fact, several lines were quite lyrical or poetic and gave me chills when combined with the generally morose mood of the game. So yeah, this is one of the first games that I've really enjoyed that beg to be defined as art. And I know all about the argument against games as art, but this game reminds me a lot of modern installation style exhibits, where the viewer is expected to move through the artwork and interact with it. I really dig this game and will likely write a paper on it for one of my writing workshops. It does everything that the path desperately grasped for, but it still remains fun to play.
You need to open the game folder, find the data subfolder and create a file named rcfg.xml there. (C:\Program Files\bitcomposer\The Void\Data) Open it in any text editor and write the following code:
Enter your desired X resolution between the <Width> tags and the Y resolution between the <Height> tags. Other tags are self-explanatory and modify correspondent settings. This configuration will launch the game in 1680x1050 resolution, with 8x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic texture filtering. Texture and lighting quality is at maximum, HDR is turned on.
note: there's a bug regarding mines with ATI cards. disabling anti-alliasing fixes it.
Thanks for the info. But about the bug... what mines? what is the bug exactly? I have an ATI card.
Thanks for the info. But about the bug... what mines? what is the bug exactly? I have an ATI card.
You won't be able to see mines (the deposit in rock type ones) if you have an ATI Radeon HD 4xxx pr better and AntiAliasing enabled. Disable antialiasing, while we're workingon a fix.
The LxR on
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Okay, so, some collected understanding I've gleaned from various sisters, and a few things I'm learning.
One, if you happen to have like, 200 of a given Colour on hand, take your time feeding it to a sister. Doses of 50 or so, I think, untill they stop talking. A -lot- of dialog I'm sure I missed my first few times through now that I know that.
Two, head for the Nature sister, she's got a lot to say about mechanics in the Void. Red lines on her face, I cant remember her name. Damned monosylabic names. XD
As for what she says, in particular...
Okay, the gist of her speech (up to second heart filled) follows the theme that the Void is your Canvas. The more you 'use' it, the more you abuse it. Just casting lots of glyphs, let alone how much colour, is considered waste, I think. I think she's the one who mentions the Scorpio... Urgh. Just trust me. Dont max out every tree in a garden at once. Its a REAL bad idea.
More specifically, she said that just using a sister's favorite colours in her realm sucks -extra- hard, with some extra emphasis on trees grown in those colours.
She also mentions something about the colour that can kill a sister. I cant recall if that ones safer to use in that realm or not...
What else was there.... Donor is a near-harmless glyph, at least. And fighting a Brother causes chaos like no tomorrow. Escaping from a Brother fight seems to be easy. I wonder if just getting into the fighting chamber causes extra damage, or if you have to actively fight... Hrmn.
Also, since I know your watching this thread, LxR, let me take a moment and give kudos on the english voicework. Everybody has -character-, a tone, a feeling to them. Sister Death sounds exactly like she looks, huddled despair, Mantid sounds reasonably sane in comparison to the almost manic overtones most of the rest of them have (Tyrant and the organ-grinder especially, brr! ) and so on. Was Ole supposed to be this dry, barely there, utterly blank sort of tone? Or did her VA just have a bad time?
Posts
Backtracking from that article to the ones on Pathalogic, I feel a great sense of loss deep within me for what appears to be a truly exquisite game that I will never play. I mean, when even the game's biggest fan can't finish the last third of it and warns you off the whole experience it's clearly best to just avoid inevitable frustration and not even start the venture. Maybe one day that re-translation project will happen. One day...
I took the plunge on this one and went ahead and ordered it. It would seem that shipping to the US is, in fact, free; this is also supported by the Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments thread on the game. So now would seem to be the time to order, if you want a hard copy.
but this is pre-ordered. I was pretty into pathologic and remember being rather moved by that guys Rock Paper Shotgun article on it. I trust his recommendation.
One fresh, hard, boob-filled afterlife please.
Im the Commercial Director of Mamba Games, publisher of the Void in Europe! Hope your all good! We are pleased to say that we have now extended the FREE DELIVERY OPTION for another week off our website since the take up has been great!
So, this will now finish on the 10th October - this includes all our products, so if you buy 3 you save a lot of money especially from the USA/Japan and Australia!
Thanks guys for your support!
Jason Codd
I'd love to see a game like this hit Steam and have a million people buy it.
Another great review for the Void.
8.9 / 10
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
[edit] Alright, bought it. Yay!
How was that game?
I KISS YOU!
As an experience? Mindblowingly awesome.
Is it at least playable or will I need to fight it just to get through it? What did people (who actually enjoyed it) complain most about it?
I KISS YOU!
Two hours of gameplay later you're trading bullets for food and bandages, to give you an idea of the importance of just staying alive. The town itself is more likely to kill you than anything in it.
What broke the experience to me was the repetitive gameplay and lack of meaningful choices. As far as I know, each characters story is pretty much entirely linear, which made the sometimes harsh choices you make feel a lot less meaningful to me. As for the gameplay, at least two thirds of my playtime was spent running through the maze-like streets. The fact that you are not always given proper directions and there was no real way of knowing where today's main and side "quests" would start meant that every in-game day had me running past every named character in the game, usually more than once. No matter how atmospheric a place is, there is a limit to how long you can spend running through it before it loses its charm.
The game certainly had its moments and I am glad I tried it, but I doubt I could bring myself to finish it. I have a kind of dream that one day I could be some way involved in the making of a game inspired by Pathologic, using a similar story and atmosphere but with branching storylines and fast-travel between locations.
Even Stalker or Silent Hill.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Just read the LP.
http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/TheVoid/Void.shtm - another review for the Void just came in at Just Adventure, giving us an A.
2Lord Jezo: The game requires a lot of patience, and you need to want to understand the game. If these two conditions meet, you'll soon find that you can look past the flaws. We have some devoted players on our forums who completed the game with no problems even though the translation is somewhat mangled, and the gameplay is grave difficult. Also, if you're stuck, I've translated a full walkthrough in English. Here's the link:
http://www.pathologic-game.com/path_walkthrough_eng.pdf - full official walkthrough.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
There's a postal strike in the UK that might cause delays.
The torrent will be available on the game's official site at http://www.tension-game.com/ free of charge, as well as the Russian voiceovers.
Sorry for the misinformation, this was a total surprise for me too.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Hmmm... I hate to follow that generous post with whining, but Jesus, this is even more murderously hard than Pathologic, and the translation's still not that great. I appreciate this isn't going for the games-as-fun angle and I really, really admire that - it's one reason why I'm honestly happy to pay for the thing even if I never finish it, because more developers should be willing to take wild risks, not to mention punish their fanbase - but I can't help but wonder if this isn't going a little too far. I stretch to the absolute limit satisfying the first Sister, then I find out I have to give the second almost as much again before I can even open her damn levels, and they both want at least one colour that doesn't even exist yet? It feels impossible. Not I'm-sure-there-must-be-a-way-to-do-this 'impossible', just impossible. I can see the official forums are discussing all kinds of advanced play tips, but on the one hand the manual's difficult enough to understand as it is, and on the other none of them suggest how I can get past this.
Still a beautiful game, though. Uta's chamber... wow. Almost worth it just to see something like that.
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
Rooks, you should go here and ask for help/tips and detail your problem exactly, because I played the Russian version and got fairly far and didn't have anywhere near the trouble you seem to have. To me, it was nowhere near as hard or tedious to play as Pathologic.
Pathologic let you wander around and experiment. This doesn't. Second proper attempt I took six rounds to get to the second sister and satisfy her, and much of that time was just spent sitting on the world map waiting for a timer to count down. I can't see anything else to do, I can't get it to go any faster (speeding up time doesn't alter how many rounds it takes to do something)...
Understand I'm not trying to say the game's rubbish, give me my money back, so forth. I can very easily see how the intended hardcore niche would go utterly nuts over this, I accept there's lots to love and I would agree it raises some really, really valuable questions about game design that most developers wouldn't even dream of implementing. At the same time I'm just not sure making games 'not fun' as in PLAY CORRECTLY! TOO SLOW! YOU'RE SCREWED! DO IT AGAIN! etc., etc. is quite the way to go. I wish I could enjoy The Void, because I can certainly see how it's possible, but I'm starting to feel pretty strongly that something like Demon's Souls is a far better example of how to accomplish a lot of the same design goals without crushing the player right from the word go.
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
But two things.
One, how the heck can I get my gestures to be more consistent? I appear to blow my Donor glyphs about 60% of the time. "You should have used a Donor glyph. Now some of your colour is wasted in vain."
Except the tree seems to have grown, and yields plenty of colour?
Second question would be, what/where am I supposed to find a "better" solution for dealing with Predators? Just blasting them with colour's no good, I'm gathering. Or does that mean I'm supposed to use a more "efficient" combat spell on them instead?
I guess the overall question is... How the heck do I NOT waste so much colour? Its wierd to have Sister Death yell at me for blowing so much, and getting swarmed....
As for the game being hardcore — maybe, just maybe, we went a little overboard. I can only calm you by saying that our next game is going to be a lot more relaxing and fun, while at the same time we're not lowering the bar and there will be plenty of food for reflection in it.
Also, I'm concidering making a simplification patch for the Void, but it's certainly not going to make the game more fun — you're supposed to feel like your soul close to dead in it — and it feels exactly so!
2Teyar:
>> Except the tree seems to have grown, and yields plenty of colour?
The trees only give 80% of the Color they can give, when you mess up the Donor glyph, but it shouldn't be a problem. Also - do you have a widescreen monitor? I'm starting to think that's the problem for half of the mis-recognitions of the Donor. Try drawing it as large as possible.
>>Second question would be, what/where am I supposed to find a "better" solution for dealing with Predators? Just blasting them with colour's no good, I'm gathering. Or does that mean I'm supposed to use a more "efficient" combat spell on them instead?
The game doesn't encourage you to fight predators and
Also - Sister Death will blame you for spending color either way, just mind your status.
A small tip: if you feel like running out of Color, you can fill just one Heart and leave the rest empty, as when you have two hearts converting Color at the same time, you have twice as less time to live.
2Everyone: * in Futurama professor voice *
Good news, everyone!
The official The Void bonus torrent is up and ready for downloading!
http://www.tension-game.com/index_en.php — link to the news post
PS: Oh yeah, and of course let me know, what you think about it.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
Awesome! The soundtrack is amazing. Thanks for this.
And for those who try it, right-click-save-as seems to work for getting the torrent. Just left-clicking on it didn't work for me.
I got mine yesterday. Have you tried sending them some angry email?
note: there's a bug regarding mines with ATI cards. disabling anti-alliasing fixes it.
Thanks for the info. But about the bug... what mines? what is the bug exactly? I have an ATI card.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
---- Alexander Pope
One, if you happen to have like, 200 of a given Colour on hand, take your time feeding it to a sister. Doses of 50 or so, I think, untill they stop talking. A -lot- of dialog I'm sure I missed my first few times through now that I know that.
Two, head for the Nature sister, she's got a lot to say about mechanics in the Void. Red lines on her face, I cant remember her name. Damned monosylabic names. XD
As for what she says, in particular...
More specifically, she said that just using a sister's favorite colours in her realm sucks -extra- hard, with some extra emphasis on trees grown in those colours.
She also mentions something about the colour that can kill a sister. I cant recall if that ones safer to use in that realm or not...
What else was there.... Donor is a near-harmless glyph, at least. And fighting a Brother causes chaos like no tomorrow. Escaping from a Brother fight seems to be easy. I wonder if just getting into the fighting chamber causes extra damage, or if you have to actively fight... Hrmn.
Also, since I know your watching this thread, LxR, let me take a moment and give kudos on the english voicework. Everybody has -character-, a tone, a feeling to them. Sister Death sounds exactly like she looks, huddled despair, Mantid sounds reasonably sane in comparison to the almost manic overtones most of the rest of them have (Tyrant and the organ-grinder especially, brr! ) and so on. Was Ole supposed to be this dry, barely there, utterly blank sort of tone? Or did her VA just have a bad time?