I have extremely conflicting feelings regarding this game. The surface sokoban gameplay is okay, nothing too great about it. But early on you realize there is much more. And it feels absolutely awesome finding the secrets, for example when I got the first time to crawlspace and found the wings, it was epic! However while I found the wings, I could not find the ability to talk to rocks and only found out later about it, when Adam Millard talked about it in one of his videos. It is easy to gloss over important items or clues and when it happens, it is brutal. Several hours of gameplay have to be redone, which sucks. This game wastes so much time and the conclusion is not enough for a casual fan. It is niche and for people who do not mind redoing 200+ rooms because they accidentally took the stairs for some nice new lore titbit, it is brillant. But the average fan will get burned out by the simplistic surface dungeon crawling

“Become endless? To hell with all of that! I'm happy because we're together, right here and now. Even when the last star burns out... This memory will surely remain. Because I love you.”

I am assuming that if you have decided to click on that ‘I’m ready’ button you have learnt of the curious decision made within the heart of the void. If you have not, I will not begrudge you of your agency if you decide to read on further. I myself cheated this game out of its many secrets similarly to this, yet by the time I did so, it was because I was fully enamoured with it. So, I give this final opportunity to turn back should you seek to form your own infatuation with this experience before I corrupt any preconception you have with that of my bias.

As you are left perhaps still reeling at the decision made by Lady Gray, you reload the game and are given a brief reprieve to absorb what exactly has just transpired before you are thrown back once more into the void. That initial premise of Void Stranger you just endured in that first playthrough, encapsulating those classical story archetypes, was merely there to serve as pretext. A formative basis in which to be iterated upon in a never-ending pursuit of recontextualization and retrospection. The first layer of many in which you engage and form an understanding with a literature’s thoughts and ideas. Conventionally most stories will end here leaving the reader on their own to pursue any further depths, Void Stranger however does the work for you in reframing itself. Narratively bringing itself forward an age, the world setting shifting to cement this change. Becoming modern, a more contemporary piece, self-critical and questioning. The game’s story structure has evolved paralleling that of how story frameworks have over time. You slowly discover that Void Stranger is about the ever-evolving nature of literature itself.

But no that is not the immediate concern is it, this realisation happens later when the dust is settled and the immediate fire is put out. The most pressing thought that dwells in one’s mind for the second playthrough is less abstract. This thought as you are given control over a new character, this stranger that Gray chose over the very charge in which she braved hell itself for, forms a simple question. Why? Why did she make that choice?

And here lies the focal point of this game. Void Stranger is ultimately not a drama nor a romance but that of a tragedy. It is about the insurmountable power of love yes, but more so about one of its perpetually recurring adversities. More specifically that of the irreconcilable differences between the understanding of love of a parent with that of their child. How these different interpretations of love between them are not reciprocated because they each are conceived from that which is fundamentally opposed.

Gray embodies limitless love for one person, but that devotion was never towards her daughters. Instead, Gray’s love and devotion is ethereal, directed towards the voided, to that of a deceased queen upon whom their lineage derives. In lieu of a living being of flesh in which to dedicate her love, there is only simple memory. If memory is all that remains then so be it, Gray will see to it that it persists eternally. A light that she must see become endless.

Parents do not love their children for who they are. How can they? Initially there is nothing in which to form such a connection. These fragile zygotes that only eventually grow into personhood have yet to form a self. They are naught more than a growing mass of flesh. To sincerely love a child before they can grow and realise themselves is impossible. Instead, a parent loves that which they can project onto, a perceived potential. A belief in the idea of what the child will eventually become. For Gray that belief is in that endless light. That these children, and their children, and their children will live ever eternal. Proxies for the endlessly recurring memory that she is devoted to. This is a sincere expression of love. The tragic rationale on how she made that choice in the void.

A child’s love in turn starts as something much cleaner but unfortunately no less delusional. It, at least, is founded upon something tangible, the corporeal and living caretaker in front of them. This person who seemingly loves them unconditionally. As the child grows and attains self-actualization, this formative perception of love is sought to be reciprocated. Lillie (and the Lily whom was lost to the void) loves Gray wholeheartedly. And in turn seek to express this love by embodying to become just like them, to honour them by living as their reflection. Eventually however, it is come to be understood that the unconditional basis that formed such a love is not real.

And yet it does not matter at all! Love is belief in as much as it is devotion. Lillie embodies a sincere unconditional love for her mother Gray naïve it may be. This love however is not what Gray sought. She cannot accept Lillie to live for her sake over that of her muse. To do so would extinguish her memory, her eternal light, to kill what little remains. And so Gray does not, and cannot, reciprocate this love coming from this reflection herself. And so she rejects it.

There is no recourse. The memory is still doomed to fade. Devotion without purpose is foolishness. As Gray too becomes only memory what then becomes of Lillie? This being whose self was conceived from the basis of these two irreconcilable and unreciprocated beliefs in love? The dawning realization that Lillie could never become someone Gray could see as worthy to love. That perhaps she only exists as a wrong choice, that it should have been her left behind in the void. What answer exists there for her should she return? For one devoid of devotion? I will not deny you from forming your answer by presenting my own.

Void Stranger does not end here. As far as I am aware Void Stranger does not end. It seeks to encapsulate something grander than a story. The journey of life itself in all its infinite recursion. It repeats that trick mentioned earlier once more. Bringing the story forward another age, recontextualizing itself. The nature of story itself now coming under scrutiny. The enigmatic purpose of demons and of void to be elaborated upon and revealed. A work as a living being in which we breathe life into. Now becoming post-modern.

But I am not capable nor willing to elaborate any further. Satisfied as I am to leave it here. The adventure of life goes on, with and without me.

“I don’t know what this feeling is, but… I was searching for it for a long time. Now that I’ve found it… I realize that it doesn’t belong to me.”

Played it through to the VOIDED ending and I'm really mixed on this one.

I got absolutely addicted to this and spent an entire Saturday playing it for 9+ hours .The depth of this game is really amazing and something special, this is a labrynth full of secrets and I know there's so much more in the game I haven't seen. If a puzzle room seems suspisciously easy its probably because there's something hidden there, if there's an out of place looking object it probably has some sort of purpose. It was really cool to see objects I noticed looking suspiscious getting mentioned in hints on how to get secrets later on and going "oh, so that's what that is there for". You also unlock more story as you find secrets and progress so the entire experience just feels immensely rewarding.

I normally don't have an interest in puzzle games but ZeroRanger is one of my all time favorite games and this is the only other game by that dev, so I wanted to pick this up. The one thing that makes ZR hard to recommend to people is that there is an ending that just deletes your save when you fail - I will defend that part of ZR because the game is very short and getting to the end after you've already done it once takes less than an hour. Well, Void Stranger feels like it was entirely built on that idea. Unlike ZR this is not a short game either, this game is a whopping gauntlet of 255 floors, some of them are easy but some could take you ages depending on how good you are at puzzles. There is no "undo" button on puzzles, you either have to reset the game or die on purpose anytime you make a mistake, which will happen a LOT. You also can't go up one level to previous floors and there's no level select feature - you can find shortcuts and skip through floors though. But if you miss something in a floor, you are SoL unless you restart the game or can find a secret path back to that floor.

So while the concept and design is awesome I question whether it was the best decision to apply the ideas they used to a sokoban game. The lack of undo button and level select is necessary for the game to work for reasons that would require me to spoil the entire progression of the game to explain, but when the thing gating my progression is this endless gauntlet of often difficult puzzles it got frustrating very quickly, and having to redo the same puzzles so many times made me feel like the game did not respect my time.