The Void

play it play it play it play it

I really like this game for reasons I can't really mention without going into spoilers. I see The Void as a work of art that makes good use of the medium strengths, but because of it's unforgiving and cryptic nature will forever remain a niche title. 

A word of advice: Save often, practice the glyphs and don't believe everything you hear.

Recommended if you can get past the tough difficulty curve (and the fact that the difficulty curve involves figuring out what youre even meant to be doing)

This is like a weird german expressionist film. It's very artsy, and obscure.

Personally it didn't click with me. I found it frustrating and tiring to constantly try and understand what the hell's going on.

The easiest way to escape the void is to exit the game.

The Void is a perfect execution of what its going for.  Unfortunately, what it's going for is making you feel sad and tired. 

If you want some high quality despair, this game has you covered, but I had to give up on it when I realized the game had tricked me into trapping myself in a no win scenario (like a sierra game except not pointlessly dickish).  I think it's an excellently designed game, but I don't think I can recommend it to anyone.

Absolutely fantastic visuals though, Ice Pick Lodge are a treasure.

This game is a harsh mistress. Stunningly beautiful and terrible at the same time. It makes you doubt your abilities, your sanity, your existence. I don't think I ever lasted more than two, maybe three hours and never got close to the ending.

54 minutes ago, biosynth8 said:

This game is a harsh mistress. Stunningly beautiful and terrible at the same time. It makes you doubt your abilities, your sanity, your existence. I don't think I ever lasted more than two, maybe three hours and never got close to the ending.

Horror Adventure?

On 7/31/2020 at 11:32 PM, kerdios said:

Horror Adventure?

More like a surrealistic survival game. I think that describes it best. You might even call it a rouge-like. It's not, but what good are save files when you just noticed that you mismanaged your resources and brought yourself into an unwinnable situation hours ago?

I played it for maybe 20 hours or so recently and I mostly enjoyed it. Really unique with great art, weird music and characters. I'd say I still prefer Pathologic by the same developer, because it seemed more well-rounded and functional as a game. I didn't try to finish it in the end, because there was no chance I would actually have been successful. I did run into boss fights more often than apparently should be the case and these I really disliked. There were some indications that something about the story progression was bugged, but I haven't been able to find any info on it.