[The Void is Deep and the Mind is a Sponge] (Minor Spoilers Ahead)
The squeeze of the Void is one that you won't notice until you're no longer diving deeper. It's only when you're finally out of the darkness, gazing at the stars that you can breathe again.
Void Stranger is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really fucking exhausting. The Sokoban-style puzzle premise is simple: move floor tiles and blocks to navigate through a series of obstacles to descend deeper into the dungeon. That's not ALL Void Stranger is, but it's enough to sell someone on the premise.
Sokoban-style games can be exhausting through their often repetitive nature: the movement, the music, the puzzle solving, the graphics, these can all blur together if the game is crafted without dedicated care. As much as I love Snoopy, Snoopy's Magic Show is an example of this type of game. It's got some wonderful ideas, but the game gets tiring after bout twenty of its... let's see here- ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY LEVELS?! And you're telling me that Void Stranger has more than double that many floors? Is that why void Stranger is an exhausting game?
No. It's not. Of course it's not. Look at the rating I'm giving this game. Of course that's not the reason why. I played this game for almost 40 hours. Why would anyone spend forty hours playing a Sokoban game if it wasn't one of the most gripping gaming experiences I've ever had?
No, Void Stranger is an exhausting game not just because of how many puzzles there are. It's the size of the puzzles. The scale of the puzzles. The depth of the puzzles. The way the puzzles make you think. The way the puzzles make you move. The way the puzzles subvert your expectations. The way the puzzles stick in your mind long after you've closed the game because you're too tired to keep playing tonight. Like all marathons, it gets tiring. Sure you feel smart when you solve a puzzle. But then you have to move on. You're allowed and encouraged to revel in a moment of success. The game will not move on until you do. But then you have to do it all over again. You have to reset your mind, throw away almost everything you knew about the room before and start from a tabula rasa once again. And then you have to start thinking all over again.
Void Stranger knows that puzzle games are only experienced in their intended form once and takes every opportunity to capture that experience as often as possible. Even when some rooms are revisited, never are the processes of navigating a room exactly identical. A first playthrough will be without any power-ups and will your true raw puzzle solving skills. If you were paying attention to the puzzles within the puzzles as you descended, you might start a second playthrough with new power-ups known as "burdens". These include a pair of wings that allow you to hover over a single empty tile to reach other sections of a room, a sword that allows you to attack enemies in the direction you face, and a cube that lets you talk to rocks (or "void eggs"). The former two powerups are invaluable when replaying the first 255 rooms, they make it tolerable and offer a new way to approach a similar puzzle. "Okay", the game says, "you've demonstrated you understand what's going on here on the surface. You don't have to do it again if you don't want to.". And we appreciate the game for it. The last thing Void Stranger wants is for people to get bored solving the same puzzles over and over again. It's this third burden, the cube that lets you talk with void Eggs that I find to be the most interesting. There are rocks littered through rooms in the game. On a first playthrough they appear as little more than obstacles in he path that can be used to activate switches, for example. On repeat playthroughs with this Cube burden, you can now speak to the void eggs. You can listen to their hints about secrets with treasure chests. You can listen to them tell the tails of the eight Void Lords. But mostly, you can listen to them wallow in despair, sadness, misery and dread. These are the voices of the people who have given up. These are the voices of the people who fell into the void and relinquished their selves. These are the people who have accepted defeat here in the halls of hell. These are the voices of the people on steam who will complain that the game was too hard and that they couldn't do it and how dare someone make a game on their own terms that didn't have mass general appeal.
Void Stranger's greatest strength, therefore, is also the reason that I struggle recommending this game to just anyone. If you're serious about diving down into the void, do it and accept that you will have your brain faculties pushed to some strange limits that you didn't think were possible in a video game. Your head will hurt. It will feel like your mind is being squeezed like a sponge for every drop of liquid. Just when you think the clench couldn't get any tighter, Void Stranger wrings just a little bit more, until you're completely out of juice and somehow playing System Erasure's other game ZeroRanger, again (whether by choice or otherwise). And then it keeps squeezing. I am the sponge.
I've had Void Stranger dreams. I've dreamt that I'm stuck solving block puzzles, going deeper and deeper into the void, stuck in a cycle of stress and elation and despair. I wake up at the sound of my alarm in the morning in a sticky sweat, waking up from this weird dream. But I didn't stop playing the game. I felt like a character out of House of Leaves, the way I couldn't stop myself from digging deeper and deeper into this non-Euclidian realm filled with traps and trolls and weird little merchants who have a character theme that plays weird sound effects if you wait long enough. but I had to keep going. I wasn't satisfied saying "that's enough for me" after reaching the bottom of the void for the first time. Nor was it enough after I made it to the bottom of the void without dying. Nor was it enough after finishing New Game +, nor was it enough after playing New Game ++. Nor was it enough when I finally found out the truth. Even as I write this review I find myself wanting to know more. I want to keep digging, I want to go deeper, I don't want to stop.
But we have to all find satisfaction at some point. If we don't we'll only go deeper and deeper forever. The pressure of the void increasing with each level lower we go. I have reached that point. I know that I have reached the conclusion of Void Stranger in a way I can live with. I have been wrung dry.
In the final puzzle room of my journey, a void egg told me something that broke me. Three lines. These void eggs have spouted almost nothing but misery and hopelessness. So why did this one break me? Why did its words resonate so deeply? They won't make sense here. They won't make sense to you if you haven't journeyed deeper into the void than you should have. Go find this void egg and experience it for yourself. You'll know it when you find it.
The magic thing about a sponge is what happens when there's no moisture left in it. Suddenly, it absorbs everything from its surroundings and becomes entirely saturated with the fluid in which it is immersed. It becomes filled up with all the of knowledge of the struggle, of just what they went through and the wonderful feeling is it be fulfilled. It's hard to appreciate just how difficult these puzzles were, and how much determination I put into solving them until I finally reached a point where I could stop and stare at them. In the span of three weeks I spent almost forty hours grinding myself down only to experience one of the highest highs I've ever had playing a game. What might be an exercise in masochism to some, was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. An experience I don't think I'll ever experience again. An experience that has been so meticulously crafted to weed out all but those who are truly as dedicated and willing to experience as someone like me: someone who is willing to put themselves through one of the most confusing and complicated and mind-warping experiences a game has to offer.
Beings of darkness who live in the void must feel sad. They cannot know how dark their world truly is until they're out looking at the stars, air in their lungs, free from the pressures of the Void.
The squeeze of the Void is one that you won't notice until you're no longer diving deeper. It's only when you're finally out of the darkness, gazing at the stars that you can breathe again.
Void Stranger is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really fucking exhausting. The Sokoban-style puzzle premise is simple: move floor tiles and blocks to navigate through a series of obstacles to descend deeper into the dungeon. That's not ALL Void Stranger is, but it's enough to sell someone on the premise.
Sokoban-style games can be exhausting through their often repetitive nature: the movement, the music, the puzzle solving, the graphics, these can all blur together if the game is crafted without dedicated care. As much as I love Snoopy, Snoopy's Magic Show is an example of this type of game. It's got some wonderful ideas, but the game gets tiring after bout twenty of its... let's see here- ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY LEVELS?! And you're telling me that Void Stranger has more than double that many floors? Is that why void Stranger is an exhausting game?
No. It's not. Of course it's not. Look at the rating I'm giving this game. Of course that's not the reason why. I played this game for almost 40 hours. Why would anyone spend forty hours playing a Sokoban game if it wasn't one of the most gripping gaming experiences I've ever had?
No, Void Stranger is an exhausting game not just because of how many puzzles there are. It's the size of the puzzles. The scale of the puzzles. The depth of the puzzles. The way the puzzles make you think. The way the puzzles make you move. The way the puzzles subvert your expectations. The way the puzzles stick in your mind long after you've closed the game because you're too tired to keep playing tonight. Like all marathons, it gets tiring. Sure you feel smart when you solve a puzzle. But then you have to move on. You're allowed and encouraged to revel in a moment of success. The game will not move on until you do. But then you have to do it all over again. You have to reset your mind, throw away almost everything you knew about the room before and start from a tabula rasa once again. And then you have to start thinking all over again.
Void Stranger knows that puzzle games are only experienced in their intended form once and takes every opportunity to capture that experience as often as possible. Even when some rooms are revisited, never are the processes of navigating a room exactly identical. A first playthrough will be without any power-ups and will your true raw puzzle solving skills. If you were paying attention to the puzzles within the puzzles as you descended, you might start a second playthrough with new power-ups known as "burdens". These include a pair of wings that allow you to hover over a single empty tile to reach other sections of a room, a sword that allows you to attack enemies in the direction you face, and a cube that lets you talk to rocks (or "void eggs"). The former two powerups are invaluable when replaying the first 255 rooms, they make it tolerable and offer a new way to approach a similar puzzle. "Okay", the game says, "you've demonstrated you understand what's going on here on the surface. You don't have to do it again if you don't want to.". And we appreciate the game for it. The last thing Void Stranger wants is for people to get bored solving the same puzzles over and over again. It's this third burden, the cube that lets you talk with void Eggs that I find to be the most interesting. There are rocks littered through rooms in the game. On a first playthrough they appear as little more than obstacles in he path that can be used to activate switches, for example. On repeat playthroughs with this Cube burden, you can now speak to the void eggs. You can listen to their hints about secrets with treasure chests. You can listen to them tell the tails of the eight Void Lords. But mostly, you can listen to them wallow in despair, sadness, misery and dread. These are the voices of the people who have given up. These are the voices of the people who fell into the void and relinquished their selves. These are the people who have accepted defeat here in the halls of hell. These are the voices of the people on steam who will complain that the game was too hard and that they couldn't do it and how dare someone make a game on their own terms that didn't have mass general appeal.
Void Stranger's greatest strength, therefore, is also the reason that I struggle recommending this game to just anyone. If you're serious about diving down into the void, do it and accept that you will have your brain faculties pushed to some strange limits that you didn't think were possible in a video game. Your head will hurt. It will feel like your mind is being squeezed like a sponge for every drop of liquid. Just when you think the clench couldn't get any tighter, Void Stranger wrings just a little bit more, until you're completely out of juice and somehow playing System Erasure's other game ZeroRanger, again (whether by choice or otherwise). And then it keeps squeezing. I am the sponge.
I've had Void Stranger dreams. I've dreamt that I'm stuck solving block puzzles, going deeper and deeper into the void, stuck in a cycle of stress and elation and despair. I wake up at the sound of my alarm in the morning in a sticky sweat, waking up from this weird dream. But I didn't stop playing the game. I felt like a character out of House of Leaves, the way I couldn't stop myself from digging deeper and deeper into this non-Euclidian realm filled with traps and trolls and weird little merchants who have a character theme that plays weird sound effects if you wait long enough. but I had to keep going. I wasn't satisfied saying "that's enough for me" after reaching the bottom of the void for the first time. Nor was it enough after I made it to the bottom of the void without dying. Nor was it enough after finishing New Game +, nor was it enough after playing New Game ++. Nor was it enough when I finally found out the truth. Even as I write this review I find myself wanting to know more. I want to keep digging, I want to go deeper, I don't want to stop.
But we have to all find satisfaction at some point. If we don't we'll only go deeper and deeper forever. The pressure of the void increasing with each level lower we go. I have reached that point. I know that I have reached the conclusion of Void Stranger in a way I can live with. I have been wrung dry.
In the final puzzle room of my journey, a void egg told me something that broke me. Three lines. These void eggs have spouted almost nothing but misery and hopelessness. So why did this one break me? Why did its words resonate so deeply? They won't make sense here. They won't make sense to you if you haven't journeyed deeper into the void than you should have. Go find this void egg and experience it for yourself. You'll know it when you find it.
The magic thing about a sponge is what happens when there's no moisture left in it. Suddenly, it absorbs everything from its surroundings and becomes entirely saturated with the fluid in which it is immersed. It becomes filled up with all the of knowledge of the struggle, of just what they went through and the wonderful feeling is it be fulfilled. It's hard to appreciate just how difficult these puzzles were, and how much determination I put into solving them until I finally reached a point where I could stop and stare at them. In the span of three weeks I spent almost forty hours grinding myself down only to experience one of the highest highs I've ever had playing a game. What might be an exercise in masochism to some, was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever. An experience I don't think I'll ever experience again. An experience that has been so meticulously crafted to weed out all but those who are truly as dedicated and willing to experience as someone like me: someone who is willing to put themselves through one of the most confusing and complicated and mind-warping experiences a game has to offer.
Beings of darkness who live in the void must feel sad. They cannot know how dark their world truly is until they're out looking at the stars, air in their lungs, free from the pressures of the Void.
If you love esoteric games and have a LOT of patience, this one might be banger material. Even months after finishing it though I'm still struggling to process this as a gaming experience. The amount of detective work, note writing and REAL, no bullshit, no hand-holding mystery solving you need to do to get to the bottom of this game is unparalleled, and I don't think I will ever see anything like it again.
touch grass
Creepy OuterWilds-like that constantly had me feeling like I was both sequence-breakingly clever and completely in the dark about how this world works. Also has a bitchin' soundtrack and a tonally confusing obsession with titties. If Hades is the Gideon the Ninth of video games, Void Stranger is the Harrow the Ninth.
Stopped playing because I stumbled into hard mode, where there's little to do but grind out those sokoban GIMP puzzles while feeling the literal energy drain from the mental crunch of it all. Still a mind-blowing experience for what I got out of it. How dare she choose the fetus
Stopped playing because I stumbled into hard mode, where there's little to do but grind out those sokoban GIMP puzzles while feeling the literal energy drain from the mental crunch of it all. Still a mind-blowing experience for what I got out of it. How dare she choose the fetus
Void Stranger is a time traveler in a room full of archaeologists.
A game that I honestly wasn't expecting when my friends first mentioned and showed it to me; granted, I got in a little late, and it was a matter of excitement that drove me forward.
Overall, an extremely well-developed puzzle game with an outstanding story that very much rewards curiosity and thorough exploration.
Overall, an extremely well-developed puzzle game with an outstanding story that very much rewards curiosity and thorough exploration.
This game is really great in myriad ways--not least of all in the art direction and OST--and the only thing preventing it from being an instant favorite is the raw fatigue factor from spending 80 hours racking my brain over puzzles I was hardly qualified to solve in the first place. For a game that was already way out of my comfort zone from minute 0, I had a nice time.
An intuitive, incredibly thought out puzzle game that provides both joy and anguish and equal measures, real charming characters, kick ass music, and some of the best puzzles in vidya history outside of the fuck ass stupid one that you know what I'm talking about if you've played it.
This review contains spoilers
void stranger uses its knowledge of past games and the tendencies of players as a tool for expression in a way that is years ahead of what most indie games even feel remotely capable of today. words don't really do it justice - i am just glad that a game this special exists
They did something incredibly right with this game to make me enjoy 30 hours of sokoban puzzles, and in do so in such a small span I was seeing sokobans while asleep.
The promise of delving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth for secrets was intoxicating throughout, and the puzzles themselves were always interesting.
The promise of delving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth for secrets was intoxicating throughout, and the puzzles themselves were always interesting.
The further out I get from Void Stranger, the more convinced I am that it's one of the best games of all time.
this one really hurts to shelve. I really enjoyed what I played but I have so many mental hurdles keeping me from finishing this. I would love to be the guy that plays through Void Stranger multiple times and does all the different paths but I can’t. I get super anxious thinking about this process when I know I have a bunch of other video games I want to play and a bunch of other non video game things I want to devote my time to. As I think about the rest of my life and where I’m currently, I can feel that available time pool draining right in front of me. While the esoteric nature of this game is appealing, I know that I would resort to using a guide and that makes me feel a horrible mixture of impatient and flat out dumb. I ran into a similar scenario with Outer Wilds, where I really enjoyed it to a point, but that point was a brick wall where I had to confront who I am and what I’m worth. Even making the decision to shelve this was a small confrontation between myself and those feelings, and I feel like a wounded loser in this fight.
and why did the devs make her BUSTY?????
and why did the devs make her BUSTY?????
This review contains spoilers
A genuinely unforgettable experience that really dragged on by the end. I may need to ruminate on this score for a bit but right now I feel sour on the last stretch of this game.
The first few hours were spectacular, where it felt like you frequently learning new things about the world, until you were ready to finish Gray's route unvoided. Lilith's route was a great hardmode that mixed up the existing puzzles and ended the story in a satisfactory way. After Lillith's route I felt the game's looping mechanic had outstayed it's welcome and alongside some puzzles that, if done incorrectly, would send you back to floor 1, it was a real fight for me to keep playing this one. Finishing Lilith's route should really give you some easier way to navigate the floors, it would've really helped alleviate the tedium.
By the time I got to DIS' lair and got the "true" ending, I felt I had spent far too long playing the same levels, even if there were ways to skip many of them. Each loop was giving me piecemeal in terms of new information to actually progress and I resorted to a guide for some puzzles that I think were just too obtuse for the average player to reasonably figure out on their own. New locations in Cif's route and finding DIS' lair were a lot of fun, but getting to them meant more of the same block pushing.
If this style of game appeals to you - an endless puzzle box of secrets - then Void Stranger has more than enough to get your fill, and it features some of the most satisfying "aha!" moments I've felt in a puzzle game. It's just, for me, this extreme length and depth of secrets left me with fatigue I don't often get with games. I could've done without a lot of the lore-focused segments, and the bosses felt like frustrating trial-and-error gauntlets in some cases. The devs may have made one of the most complex puzzle games of all time, but I don't think that's wholly a good thing.
The first few hours were spectacular, where it felt like you frequently learning new things about the world, until you were ready to finish Gray's route unvoided. Lilith's route was a great hardmode that mixed up the existing puzzles and ended the story in a satisfactory way. After Lillith's route I felt the game's looping mechanic had outstayed it's welcome and alongside some puzzles that, if done incorrectly, would send you back to floor 1, it was a real fight for me to keep playing this one. Finishing Lilith's route should really give you some easier way to navigate the floors, it would've really helped alleviate the tedium.
By the time I got to DIS' lair and got the "true" ending, I felt I had spent far too long playing the same levels, even if there were ways to skip many of them. Each loop was giving me piecemeal in terms of new information to actually progress and I resorted to a guide for some puzzles that I think were just too obtuse for the average player to reasonably figure out on their own. New locations in Cif's route and finding DIS' lair were a lot of fun, but getting to them meant more of the same block pushing.
If this style of game appeals to you - an endless puzzle box of secrets - then Void Stranger has more than enough to get your fill, and it features some of the most satisfying "aha!" moments I've felt in a puzzle game. It's just, for me, this extreme length and depth of secrets left me with fatigue I don't often get with games. I could've done without a lot of the lore-focused segments, and the bosses felt like frustrating trial-and-error gauntlets in some cases. The devs may have made one of the most complex puzzle games of all time, but I don't think that's wholly a good thing.
if this game respected my time more I'm sure I'd be its biggest fan
I was told it's like la-mulana but la-mulana has a bunch of QoL features that this doesn't seem to have
I was told it's like la-mulana but la-mulana has a bunch of QoL features that this doesn't seem to have
It's a game i thought it looked distinctive because of it's style, and it rekindled some nostalgia I had with Link's Awakening. What I found changed my whole perspective on how I feel about games. It's alright
one of the most absurd, memorable, unique games i've ever played
throughout the course of this definitely-basic-not-hiding-anything-at-all sokoban game, i jotted down 20 google-doc-pages worth of notes. at one point i was in photoshop for an hour assembling something. i feel like i've become a speedrunner, unwittingly. these puzzle halls are inscribed in the back of my mind. i literally had a dream about solving puzzles. the next night i had another.
in the vein of the witness, outer wilds, myst, rain world, knowledge of mechanics is the main obstacle here. overcovering the layers upon layers of how this game functions, and by extension, the game's diegetic world functions, feels incredibly rewarding. you'll retread a lot of ground but in new contexts, with new mastery, these halls start to feel both like new challenges to overcome and like old friends seen in a new light.
the story, equally esoteric, is also equally rewarding, with tons of lore to uncover and deep characters. the soundtrack is a banger, and the sprites have so much flair and care put into them.
you'll have to forgive me for not being too specific, because the joy of this game is absolutely in discovery. this is one of those impossible-to-truly-replay games. the passion of System Erasure here is incredibly evident, and when you think you've seen it all, there's always something more. get lost in the void already.
then feel the longing. ad meliora
throughout the course of this definitely-basic-not-hiding-anything-at-all sokoban game, i jotted down 20 google-doc-pages worth of notes. at one point i was in photoshop for an hour assembling something. i feel like i've become a speedrunner, unwittingly. these puzzle halls are inscribed in the back of my mind. i literally had a dream about solving puzzles. the next night i had another.
in the vein of the witness, outer wilds, myst, rain world, knowledge of mechanics is the main obstacle here. overcovering the layers upon layers of how this game functions, and by extension, the game's diegetic world functions, feels incredibly rewarding. you'll retread a lot of ground but in new contexts, with new mastery, these halls start to feel both like new challenges to overcome and like old friends seen in a new light.
the story, equally esoteric, is also equally rewarding, with tons of lore to uncover and deep characters. the soundtrack is a banger, and the sprites have so much flair and care put into them.
you'll have to forgive me for not being too specific, because the joy of this game is absolutely in discovery. this is one of those impossible-to-truly-replay games. the passion of System Erasure here is incredibly evident, and when you think you've seen it all, there's always something more. get lost in the void already.
then feel the longing. ad meliora
This game genuinely blew me away. For a good while I thought it was a pretty neat and stylised puzzle game, but then the game shows its hand and starts doing some really cool stuff. There are definitely many elements of the game which are quite obtuse and my experience was heightened by having a friend to hint me through parts of it, but I think as a game this is really special and will undoubtedly become a cult classic in the future.
More like sokobanger
The way the True Ending is structured gameplay-wise soured me on the game quite a bit, but it's still a very fascinating experience, with insanely smart puzzles and one of the best soundtracks in videogames.
If you're willing to put in the time and approach the game on its own terms, it'll be an insanely rewarding experience.
Or if you're really struggling, you know, look up void stranger sequences online, do what you want, I'm not a cop.
The way the True Ending is structured gameplay-wise soured me on the game quite a bit, but it's still a very fascinating experience, with insanely smart puzzles and one of the best soundtracks in videogames.
If you're willing to put in the time and approach the game on its own terms, it'll be an insanely rewarding experience.
Or if you're really struggling, you know, look up void stranger sequences online, do what you want, I'm not a cop.
There is a genre of person that this game is specifically targeted for which I don't fit into. Really enjoyed the storytelling, but it felt like I had to constantly consult a walkthrough to get the story. I'm a big fan of esoteric puzzles with unclear but rewarding solutions. However the game design feels especially opaque here.
One of the most insane experiences I've had playing a video game. The sheer amount of meltdowns and wtf moments while trying to figure out the story and puzzles was great. I almost never play puzzle games but this one consumed for 2 weeks.
There are still a lot of things I want to do but a break is necessary, you can burn out pretty fast playing this game.
Definitely recommend and absolutely go as blind as possible, the rewards are worth it.
There are still a lot of things I want to do but a break is necessary, you can burn out pretty fast playing this game.
Definitely recommend and absolutely go as blind as possible, the rewards are worth it.