VOID: Impressions

That certainly didn’t take long. Immediately after making the news post about VOID, made by some students at DigiPen, I downloaded it and tried it out. It’s worth pointing out that as the work of students and not even a full time Indie-game developer the game IS very short. It took me around about 20 minutes to get through the whole game but that was more than enough to form an Impressions on.

My explanation of the mechanic in the news post is round about right, but I will explain it again so you don’t have to look it up. Basically you carry around two different devices. In your left hand you carry a sort of screen which when you look through it you look at your surroundings as they appeared in the past (which is, who knows how many, years ago). In your right hand you carry a sort of time-travel, bending-time-and-space glove which allows you to shoot an area. A bubble will then appear around this area you “shot” and this bubble will be as it was in the past.

Some examples in the game. I could be walking down an empty corridor but when I look through the screen I would see that there are bookshelves along the walls, obviously now rotted away. And when I came to a broken stair-case, I shot a bubble of past at it. This meant that the everything inside the bubble temporarily reverted to how it had been in the past, including the staircase (which was now whole). I then dashed up the staircase before the bubble disappeared and the staircase was once again crumbled and broken.

Overall the graphics and gameplay of the game are absolutely wonderful. There isn’t really a story yet and without a story there isn’t really any feeling of atmosphere or being drawn into the game. But that isn’t what this is about, it’s about testing and trying out this wonderfully intelligent new gameplay mechanism.

There are a few moments where you are in pools of shallow water in the present but then when you shoot a bubble of the past at your feet you will be in a much deeper pool of water that was around back then. This was absolutely and ridiculously cool and actually rather impressive as an idea. Plus the end of this little… Demo shall we say… was rather amusing and definitely enjoyable.

There isn’t really much more to say at the moment other than that the game is showing an absolute tonne of promise and a rather impressive amount of polish for a game designed by students.

I don’t really want to say much more (although as I have said there isn’t really that much more to say at the moment) nor have I made any videos or taken any screenshots of the game. All I will say is that I absolutely urge you to give this gem a try while you can. It will only take 20 minutes of your time and I guarentee it will impress.

Well played Indie Game developers… you win again!