Game Review: The Void · 8:36pm Jul 25th, 2021
The Void. A Russian game released in 2009 by game studio Ice-Pick Lodge. How did I come upon this? I'm honestly not sure anymore, but I think it was offered to me on the cheap as a reward for upgrading a Steam badge. I think. Looking at the screenshots of the game, it would be easy to expect it to be some perv's fap fantasy; they're loaded with half-naked chicks. Yet when I read the reviews, there were all sorts of claims that this was far more than that. The reviews stoked my curiosity and I bought it, since I was getting it for dirt cheap anyway.
Then I forgot about it. For years. It languished in obscurity in my Steam library, always there but never catching my attention beyond a mere "Oh, right, I have that". Then I saw it a few months ago and decided "You know what? Screw it. I bought it, time to see what it's about." What I came away with was nothing at all like I imagined.
The story and setting of The Void are tricky to describe. Still, I shall try my best. The game is set in the titular Void, a strange realm of darkness that up close looks like a dying world and from afar looks like a bunch of interconnected nerves in, say, a brain. The main character, a nameless mute sometimes referred to as The Guest, is a soul. He was on his way to the next life – the Nightmare that exists beneath the Void – but by sheer luck found himself in this place. Here he is met by the Nameless Sister, sometimes known as Sister Death. Sister Death helps The Guest find his heart, thereby preventing him from "dying" and continuing the descent into the Nightmare. From there we begin our mission. At first, it is merely to survive. Yet as the game progresses we learn more about The Void and its inhabitants and become entangled in a philosophical battle.
The primary conflict is between the Sisters and the Brothers. The Sisters, of which there are eleven, live in their respective "chambers", regions of the Void that are considered their territory of influence. They are chained, unable to leave their chambers, and are in a state of forced subservience to the Brothers. The Sisters feed on Color, which makes them stronger, but the Brothers only feed them enough to keep them alive, and then only because they believe the Sisters are integral to the Void's ongoing survival. The Sisters are native to the Void. It is all they know.
Uta and Eli, just two of the Sisters you may meet.
By contrast, the Brothers invaded the Void from the Nightmare. They are hideously malformed, in reference to the tortures they have suffered. They believe the Void is Heaven, and work tirelessly to maintain it. They see the Sisters as a threat to the Void and thus keep them imprisoned in their respective chambers. When they first appear in-game, the Brothers are deeply divided over The Guest's role in the Void, with some believing him to be a new Brother to welcome into the fold and others fearing him as the bringer of the Void's destruction.
Patriarch and Mantid, two high-ranking members of the Brothers.
A few elements lace all of this together. The first is Color, which serves as both The Guest's life and means of interaction with the world around him. In a gameplay mechanic similar to what some of you may remember from the game Okami, the player collects Color and uses it to draw shapes, or "Glyphs", over the world, which leads to specific events happening. The Void is said to have once been brimming with Color, but now it is exceedingly rare. Somehow, The Guest's arrival has brought Color back to The Void, but not in abundance. The player gathers Color and uses it to fill his "Heart". This serves as the player's HP; run out of Color in your heart and you will die. However, it also serves as the player's source of power. Having different Colors stored in your heart will lead to different effects, such as greater walking speed or defense.
Hearts are also a big deal in the game. You can have up to 21 of them, which is just enough to have exactly 100 of each color in you. Every heart grants a unique Glyph, and a big part of the story is finding them so that you can improve your survivability. At the same time, they serve as mana production of a sort. Color placed in a heart will gradually be converted to a usable form of Color known as Nerva. Only Nerva can be used to affect the world around you, so this conversion is critical for proceeding. Yet it is also dangerous; you must always have some Color in your heart. if you somehow let all the Color in your hearts get converted to Nerva, you will die on the spot.
The Guest preparing to fill his hearts with Color. This is the screen players will see the most in any playthrough of The Void.
So here we have the game's first major and eternal balancing act: always making sure you have Nerva with which to progress the game, but not allowing all the Color to become Nerva lest you die, and at the same time making sure you have the right Colors, both in your hearts and as Nerva, for the given situation. This makes up the core of the game's strategic element.
But we've only just begun with the balancing act! One of the core goals of the game is to feed the Sisters Color. This will unlock new areas of the game to explore, thereby letting you find more hearts, complete story-driven quests, or discover superior sources of Color. But feeding the Sisters isn't a walk in the park. The amount of Color they demand for the next unlock is significant and each Sister will only feed on two specific colors (there are seven). And since Color spawns are mostly random and rarely in abundance, gathering enough of what you need can be tricky. Add onto this the fact that you're basically feeding them your lifeblood and things can get hairy quickly if you mismanaged your resources.
Sisters Death and Echo encouraging The Guest to feed them Color.
There's still more. Throughout the game you'll find "Trees", which you can instill with Color. Trees will always give out more Color than they receive, making them critical for gathering the amounts you need to progress. But the trees will also rapidly produce less and less, and eventually stop producing altogether. When that happens you have no choice but to wait for what can feel like a prohibitive amount of time for the tree to be usable again. Managing your gardens properly is extremely important, enough so that making a single mistake can mean the difference between victory or defeat.
And there's still more. If there's anything the Sisters and the Brothers agree on, it's that the Void is dying. Also clear is that you, the player, using Color to interact with the world is speeding up that death. The more Color you use for any purpose whatsoever, the closer the Void comes to its end. This is translated in-game by the different regions having hidden health, which is steadily eaten away the more you do. This leads to gameplay consequences; a damaged region will produce less Color from all sources and the monsters (called "Predators" in-game) will grow stronger and more abundant. On top of that, different Colors will cause more or less damage to the world in different regions, so it's in your favor to try and make sure you have the correct Color for a given area or you'll make things much harder for yourself with shocking rapidity. But literally everything you do – defending yourself from monsters, feeding the Sisters, planting trees, everything – causes this damage.
By now it should be clear that this is a game of balancing, careful strategy, and planning. It's far deeper than anything I expected. From the very beginning you have to keep a constant eye on how, when, and where you gather Colors, what specific Colors you need to be gathering and converting into Nerva, and always be aware of what colors your using for what purposes in what locations. The game is not forgiving about this. Make a miscalculation and you'll find yourself scrambling to get enough Color to progress or even stay alive. You can't stop producing Nerva. You can't stop gathering. You can't ignore your Gardens. You can't ignore the Sisters. And God help you if you forget that one of the Brothers has given you a mission! Those deadlines go by faster than you think and the cost of failure may be a boss fight you are in no position to win.
There are multiple endings, but only a few ways to actually win the game. The first and intended way is to give a single Sister enough Color that she "ascends" to the next phase of existence. The second method is to be greedy and ascend yourself. The third and easiest way, but also the "Bad End" is to merely survive until the end game. Which reminds me: the game is on a strict time limit. You have 35 "Cycles" to finish the game and then it's over. The good news is that when you enter a Chamber (one of the sub-worlds of the Void) time stops in regards to the Cycle, so you'll have time to think and plan, but those 35 cycles will be over before you know it.
What of the story? That is also fairly complicated, to the point that the overarching conclusions can be little more than theory and conjecture. We are caught between the conflict of the Sisters and the Brothers, the former of whom are defenseless against the latter. The Brothers have formed some sort of cult worshiping Color. They consume it greedily, even going so far as to steal it from your carefully cultivated sources, but avoid using it at all costs because they know doing so will destroy the Void. They spend much of the game debating amongst themselves on what to do about the Guest and trying to influence him into obeying the laws and avoiding their taboos, which are focused on keeping Color to themselves and treating the Sisters as pariahs to be shunned. Offend a Brother with your actions and he will challenge you, leading to a boss battle. Late in the game you can instead challenge them, but with a lone exception it is not necessary to any of the game's endings.
The Sisters, on the other hand, are generally positive about The Guest's appearance in the Void. This is because the Guest has the ability to Donate Color, and he begins uninfluenced by the Brothers. The Sisters thus try to convince the Guest to feed them Color and help them Ascend to the next plane of Existence, known as the Above (which the Brothers claim doesn't exist, for what is higher than Heaven?). But there's are two catches: only one Sister may Ascend, and when she does the Void will die, killing everything still in it. So you have to not only pick a favorite Sister, but do so with the knowledge that you are killing all the others. As such, most Sisters will eagerly encourage you to ignore the other Sisters and try to entice you. Some, like the ever-in-distress Ima, will offer you useful advice regarding Color. Others, like the demanding Ava, will try to sway you with promises of "great rewards". Then there are those like Ire, who offers both a wealth of information about the Void and makes sure you can see how sensual she is at all times.
Despite their competition, which is indeed cutthroat (one Sister actually gives you a means to murder the others, which does come with gameplay consequences), the Sisters as a whole are glad The Guest is here and the Void is dying. The impression I got is that even if they know they may not Ascend, death may be preferable to living trapped forever in The Void.
The endings are... troublesome. Each is a brief non-event cutscene of the same place, albeit at different angles and in different color shades. You then get a strange poem that differs greatly depending upon the Sister you chose (or yourself if you took that route). The poems are vague and confusing and would likely require a lot of time studying them word-by-word to comprehend just what they're going on about. That said, I think they are meant to reflect the world that the Sister or the Guest Ascended to and how they lived their lives there. Sometimes you hear the poem and you think "oh, that sounds like a good ending." Other times you get one and you're like "Huh. That sounds bad. I picked poorly, didn't I?" But the game's (sometimes frustrating) refusal to be straightforward about anything in its plot means that I couldn't tell you with confidence what endings were truly positive or negative ones.
But then, it's entirely possible that they aren't meant to be interpreted as positive or negative. The Void is complicated like that.
I have some theories regarding the overall nature of the game's theming. It's possible that the Void itself is a metaphor for the womb, and the Sisters are the potential personalities of the child to be born. If that was the case, what would the Brothers be? There's the obvious answer, but I don't know that it fits considering the Brothers are actively avoiding the Sisters most of the time.
I have an alternative theory as well: the Brothers and the Sisters agree that the Void is alive, it is mortal, and it is, and I quote, "sleeping". This could be literal; perhaps we are within the mind of a comatose individual, and Ascension would mean that person waking up. The "world map" of the Void does share a striking resemblance to interconnected nerves, and there are a great many references to the real world – or something resembling the real world – in various chambers and cut scenes. Or maybe this person is dying and the Sisters are potentially new souls ready to take over the body.
Or maybe I'm completely off base and the answer is something less grounded in reality. It's impossible to know for sure.
What I do know is that if you're the type of person who needs to know everything in a clear, cut-and-dry fashion for your game plots, you'll be turned off by the nebulous nature of The Void. On the other hand, if conjuring up and debating theories is more your cup of tea, this will be right up your alley.
There are a few issues with the game, and I think a lot of it has to do with development troubles. For one, there are no less than four versions of the game, and the main English version had a lot of changes made, including shortened cutscenes, removed dialogue, and added characters. For example, in the original Russian version Color is just a gameplay element, but in the English version Color is itself a character, with each color having its own goal. This sounds fascinating on the front of it, but in terms of the overarching gameplay and story conclusion has no bearing at all, so I question why the did this.
There's also a feeling of incompleteness, particularly with the Sisters. In order to select a Sister for Ascention, you have to give her a staggering amount of Color. You'd think you'd get some sort of reward for your efforts. After all, the developers went out of their way to give each girl a distinct personality and manner. They all give you different information and bring up wholly unique topics. So you would think that, once it becomes clear you intend for them to Ascend, they'd all have something unique to say and maybe give you something special for gameplay purposes or, heck, even just unlock a gallery. Something.
But no. With only two exceptions, when you finally manage to scrounge up enough Color to have a Sister ready for Ascension, they all say the exact same lines. Oh, the voice actresses did a good job of making the line sound different – the voice acting in this game is superb – but when it comes down to it? Yeah, exact same script. Yes, the poem at the end is different, but then the credits role and you're back at the loading screen with zero reward. I went through a lot of trouble to see every Sister's ending in the hopes of getting, say, an extra tidbit into the game's fascinating lore and background. How disappointing.
There's also the missing gameplay elements. It is stated, both in some Sisters' dialogues and in the game's menus, that using Color can lead to the world "reacting" in various ways. For example, it's claimed if you use Azure too much then the Cycle will pass by more quickly, reducing the amount of time you have to achieve your goals. Crimson was said to give enemies stronger attacks. But, as I learned from reading various online sources, that mechanic was never implemented in any version of the game; the developers ran out of time. I'm partially relieved, because the game is already pretty difficult, but at the same time you'd think they'd at least have removed the references instead of letting the players be so totally confused. Especially if they got the extra time necessary to make four different versions of the game, one with added material. I question the developers' priorities.
Going more into the actual gameplay, there are some issues. There are collision bugs that aren't too common and don't break the game, but can be a nuisance if you aren't prepared for them. For example, when trying to enter Uta's Chambers you spawn outside this little cave she lives in. The cave is up on a small ledge that you can't just walk over, so you have to jump in. Time your jump wrong though and you'll bump into the top of the cave entrance, and this will send you shooting like a cannonball in a random direction. Most of the time that direction is into the cave where you wanted to go anyway, but sometimes it sends you backwards, which can in turn send you right back out into the World Map.
Easy enough once you're used to it, but frustrating to discover.
Movement in general is kind of tricky. Your character doesn't have much speed – even with speed-boosting Color in your heart. This makes traversing the larger areas feel like a bit of a chore. Worse, the game gives you a "run" command but, confusingly, in certain chambers it has the opposite effect, reducing your already slow pace to a crawl. Then there's jumping, which you can certainly do, but you lose all control of your movement once in the air. The good news there is that this isn't a platforming game and there are only one or two instances where you might feel the need to jump across a chasm or something, but that also means that you'll not be in practice when you do and there's a good chance you'll completely screw up the timing. Fortunately it's impossible to die outside of running out of Color, but that doesn't make it any less annoying to try and jump to a particular ledge only to completely overshoot and get booted out to the world map.
Last but not least are the Glyphs you draw to affect the world. Most of the time these worked well, but there are a few that are extremely demanding. If you don't get the shape juuuuuuuuust right, the Glyph will fail. You won't lose any Nerva for failing to draw a glyph in most cases, but when you're scrambling in a Boss Fight with limited Nerva and Color running low the last thing you want is for the damn Wasp Glyph to keep failing because you didn't get that second curve just right. I only had trouble with two or three of the Glyphs and you can definitely succeed despite/without them, but it's still frustrating to come across.
Alright, final thoughts. To say The Void is not what I expected is a severe understatement. It's a game with some surprisingly deep gameplay mechanics and some fascinating lore, but both are stymied somewhat by issues that came with what seems to have been a rushed development, which can make it feel unpolished at times. Players looking for a quick thrill, intense drama, and/or fast-paced gameplay will have little interest in it. If you're the type who prefers careful planning, a good bit of challenge, and a story that comes in snippets and insinuations rather than direct storytelling then you may find a treat here.
I will note the caveat that this is not a game for children. The developers made no attempt to lighten the load in terms of philosophical musings and thus this will go over many players' heads regardless of age. And let's not forget that feeding the Sisters' Color will gradually remove their "chains", which ultimately translates into unfiltered, uncensored nudity. While there generally aren't any sexual connotations for this for the majority of the Sisters (although at least three love to flaunt it), it would still be awkward to have your kid (or spouse, I suppose) walk in to a naked chick in the middle of your screen.
The Void is a game that will appeal only to a certain subset of players. It's a touch more complicated to absorb and the learning curve can feel steep at first. The story and lore is generally fascinating but you'll have to put in the work to really grasp it. I enjoyed it in general for its unique style and ideas, but it's not a game I'd expect anyone to put, say, 100 hours into. I would recommend it to anyone looking for an unusual gaming experience... provided, of course, they have the patience for it.
(Begins reading review) Ice-Pick Lodge, that's the same studio that made Pathologic 1 and 2, isn't it? (Continues reading review) ...Yeah, that tracks.
Ah, it's one of those more thoughtful, artsy games. Calls to my mind both Gris and Othercide in equal measure.
I didn’t know you do game reviews
Interesting, but i wont play it
5560041
I was thinking the exact same thing lol
I thought I was the only one who played this game. I agree with everything you said. It's frustrating, confusing, slow, and poorly explained, but so worth it.
5560041
5560220
Pathologic? I believe I've heard of them, but that's the extent of my awareness.
5560054
Oh, Othercide! I put that one in my Wishlist because it looked so... "different". Plus it appears to be a tile-based strategy, and I generally tend to like those. Probably be a long time before I play it though.
What for the downvote, I wonder?
5560058
I haven't before, but I had a lot of thoughts in my skull after playing this one and wanted to get them down. I figured a review would be a good way to do that.
I may do this more often, since I play a lot of games anyway.
5560117
Understandable. It's definitely not a game for everyone.
5560324
Suffice it to say that your review seems like a pitch-perfect description of the design philosophy behind those games as well: bleak, nihilistic tone, dense philosophical writing, and a constant balancing act of gameplay mechanics that will destroy you if you slip up.
5560266
It's strange to play a game that is so clearly flawed and still be so very glad you played it, amiright?
5560329
Yes! A rare gem.