Curtains On: Void Stranger
At its core, Void Stranger is a puzzle game with really good puzzles. So it must be a really good, right? What more could you want from a puzzle game, aside from it having really good puzzles? But, nope. I had an awful time with this game. Sometimes. Sometimes i had a good time. So maybe a mixed time, overall. It's a sideways thumb kinda game.
Void Stranger is part of the "information game" genre, along with other titles such as Outer Wilds, Tunic, Animal Well, etc. They're games that play with the player's knowledge itself, and as such, a bad spoiler can ruin the experience drastically more than the average game. This post isn't meant so much as a review as it is just a record of my thoughts, so it's going to contain spoilers. If you haven't played the game already you are forfeiting your ability to experience it as intended by reading this post. That said, the first section does essentially amount to "why i regret playing this game" and serves as a warning to prospective players, so i will try to keep it as spoiler-light as possible. After that tho, it's spoilers galore.
The "Gimmick" of Void Stranger, if you can call it that, is that it's a Puzzle game that requires multiple playthroughs to complete. Multiple playthroughs of a puzzle game. Do you see the problem here? A significant portion of this game's play time is spent going through dozens and dozens and dozens of puzzles you've already solved to get back to the part where there's maybe something you can do to try to progress the game. Looking back, if you know what to do, then you can get through all the content within a reasonable amount of repetitions. But you don't know "what to do". That's the point of a puzzle game, figuring it out. And the biggest part of figuring this game out is a mind-numbing amounts of "grind" just to go where you need to be. If this sounds like an inane complaint, it's because it is. It would have been so easy to let the player start repeat runs at the start of previously-visited zone. But as it stands, this flaw alone is enough to make me turn a strong recommendation for what is otherwise an expertly crafted puzzle game into a "play at your own risk". This shit was a chore.
Ok, now it's heavy spoilers time.
The puzzles in this game are very good. They're just really fucking good. They're hard, but it's never because there's some kind of arcane combination of inputs to do or some secret bullshit you'd have no reason to think of. Every time i got stuck, the solution was to sit for a bit and reconsider my perspective, and once you realize "the trick" and you understand the conditions for solving, then the answer flows naturally. EXCEPT for the stupid motherfucker statue that moves when you pause the game. That was bullshit. The egg's hint doesn't even make sense, she asks "you can't reach it... or can you?" and the answer is no, you can't, it just moves by itself. So why the fuck are you saying that? Or Eus's Brand. The "Tail of the Traitorous Lord connects the brand", says the egg. Lies. The tail is the thing that connects. The brand brand doesn't connect for shit. You don't even see the brand, you have to, like, imagine it from the holes that are formed.
Ok, listen, i'm not actually complaining here. It's good that there were a handful of puzzles i couldn't solve and had to begrudgingly look up online. You see, i'm an idiot. If there's a puzzle game out there where i, an idiot, can solve every puzzle, then it's probably not hard enough of a puzzle game. And is an adversary truly an adversary if they don't best you at least once or twice?
As i said in the whining section, the structure of the game does make sense in retrospect. You go through Gray's Route, either get the bad ending and unlock infinite locusts to help get the good ending, or just get the good ending straight up (if you're a god gamer). The good ending unlocks Lillie's route, Lillie's ending unlocks the Cif route, and by the time you finish the Cif route that's 4 playthroughs during which you've been figuring out the murals and such and are ready to take on the final section. Sounds like a flow, except that's not how it fucking happened. I went through Gray's route, got the voided ending (hey, i got, like, halfway through before running out of locusts), used infinite locusts, got them all taken away by Gor's smiling statue, it brought me straight to the Z room with 0 locusts. Then i did ONE (1) missinput and fell off, and not only did that mean the whole fucking run was scrapped, but for some reason it skipped me a few rooms ahead??? So i went all the way back, wasting like 45 minutes on the way trying to decode the cypher on the murals, which, turns out, it decodes for you automatically when you get all the letter rooms that got skipped. And, also turns out, the secret text doesn't mean shit or matter in anyway. They just put an entire fucking cypher just for encrypting some fucking one liners. Anyways, I go back to Gor's statue and it strips me of my hard-earned infinite locusts AGAIN, but this time it only brings me to room 200, for some reason. I do every single fucking room from 200 to 255 without dying once. Without missinputting on the letters. I get to room 255 and what do i get? An empty room with no exit. So i think "I guess you have to kill yourself in a hole and eating the fruit will make you skip to a different room, like with the letters last run". And then i say, out loud, to myself, alone in my room, "if i gotta die, might as well die in style" and take out the hp from the UI. Which was sick. Except it doesn't skip me to the next room. So i fall in a hole and get a special ending where the void lords are willing to make a contract, but Gray doesn't remember what she wants, and the run resets. With no progress. Ok. I didn't know this was a "special ending", i thought that was just the regular ending. Was i supposed to think "If i just do the same thing here, but don't take out the HP i'll obviously unlock another character with 200 more floors of content"? Even if i did, the prospect of going through another run of this puzzle game i've already cleared 3 times was ungodly. And not "a fourth run", i'm omitting all the fuck ups and dilly dallying, here. I went through several mini-runs trying to figure out how to use the brands. I did figure out each mural had a room you could carve the brand into. But i didn't figure out you had to take out the stairs / fall in the void. So i spent several times trying to enter the stairs in different ways, and with no way to backtrack, going back to the room meant restarting the run every time. Eventually i caved, went to the wiki, figured out you just had to take out the stairs, spent several hours figuring out all the brands, getting cube, wings, sword, all the spots where mon spawns, killed Gor, went to all the shortcuts to look at all the glowing number grids that are never relevant to anything, went to beat all of mon's lair which had the hardest puzzles in the game, twice because i thought i missed something. And i was no fucking closer to figuring out how to progress in this motherfucker of a game.
Eventually while trying to figure out Cif's Brand i had to reset and went "alright, might as well go through the ending sequence since i'm right there" and finally got the normal ending. By fucking coincidence. And that's when the, like, 2nd 33% of the game unlocked. What the fuck. I feel like i should've enjoyed the Lillie puzzles, they were really good puzzles, but by this point i was so sour on the game it tainted everything. Plus i fell for that one puzzle near the middle where it tricks you into using the statue to reset your run. Real fucking smooth guys, real funny. Then the Cif Route is just going through the normal Gray puzzle with all the burdens, which was admittedly charming the first or second time i did it. With Gray. Then going through Mon's lair, which was cool the first time i did it. With Gray. But i don't really hold it against the Cif route, because Cif is hot. I checked out the wiki for the last bits to get to the final route, because, i mean, lorn idol? that idol wasn't lorn for shit. it was snug between all the eggs and cutie Tail-chan. Anyways i killed my beloved Tail-chan, went through the entire game to the last brane room, got to the portal, immediately fell for the fucking resets-your-playthrough-statue puzzle like a moron, went all the way through the game AGAIN to get back to the portal, solved the puzzles, killed Bee, spent way too long becoming way too good at dodging Cif's patterns, said "why the fuck is the finale for this puzzle game a bullet hell", then i figured out the puzzle, said "my bad", and i beat this fucking game. I beat all the routes, saw the seventeen millionth motherfucking variations of the end credits, and then it flashed me this new brand like "heehee, hoohoo, there's still more secrets for you to find out" and i flipped it the bird, closed it, and i will never ever open it again in my life.
The art is... It's good? Eh, i gotta give to Void Stranger as Void Stranger deserves. The entirely monochrome palette is very bold and works wonderfully for (almost) the whole game. It does a really good job of mixing the highly simplistic gameplay art style and the more detailed story/setpiece artstyle in an organic way. The game is good at communicating the bizarreness, the alienity of the void in so many aspects. From the effigies that show up that make you go "wtf is that, is that some actual guy? a corpse?". The way Cif's domain is just all solid black makes you feel like the world is disintegrating around you. And the voided ending. That shit was peak. That was so good. So, i would say Void Stranger has an extremely strong art direction.
But the art itself is, i mean, y'know, it's kinda, uh. It's anime. It's mostly just anime art. And the plot is also pretty anime. Listen, i have nothing against anime. I love anime. you won't hear me say anime art is bad art, ever. But you can't expect me to get wowed by a cast that is essentially the same girl 12 times with varying hairstyles and chest sizes. Ok, maybe a bit more different than that, but not a lot. The void lords are built up as these terrifying mythological figures, and then you meet them and they're just some random weeb's waifu... Their monstrous forms are way more interesting, but we barely even see those. But the art is good, it's good anime art. It's not bad anime art. Wow, i really have nothing worthwhile left to say. Let's move on.
The story itself is, uh, i mean, it's good, but, it's an anime Story. Fuck, and i was dogging on the game for "repetition". Listen, I've watched a lot of anime, a lot of fantasy in general. I can't fucking take stories about royalty anymore. Royalty isn't people, i don't care if she doesn't want to marry or gets trapped at the bottom of the null dimension or whatever. That's just a good riddance. But Gray was a pretty strong character, i do really enjoy how she mixes patient kindness with that pragmatic realism. Like, you get the feeling she's seen some shit, she's done some shit, and she's willing to do it again if she needs to. Lillie's Route sort of suffered the reverse problems. On one hand the memories are better, there's more interesting dynamic between the characters and the plot feels a lot more real, but on the other hand, Lillie's journey through the void is kinda... not really motivated? A hole randomly opens up under her feet one day, and then she goes through 255 branes, the void lords ask her "what do you desire?" and she basically goes "idk, man. I just showed up". She doesn't even know about Lily. Kinda puts on damper on the whole "Gray is willing to best the Void itself to save Lily" when Lillie also did the same, with harder puzzles, on accident. But then again, that's kinda funny, really, so i won't count it against it.
The final route's plot was anime bullshit that makes no sense. I particularly enjoyed the part where the void judge guy who it's never explained who they are or what they do shows up and goes "I can't let you do that" and then they immediately get smitten by lightning and die. That was good. Oh, yeah, and Cif's route was "Where's Bee?" into "Oh, there's Bee!". And that was the plot for Cif's route.
The Worldbuilding is really good. You really get the sense that this whole structure is some kind of massive ordeal that even the void lords have no real clue why it exists or what purpose does it serve, but they're trapped doing its bidding by a mix of devotion and literal physical coercion. Maybe it's a metaphor for religion or smth. Good stuff, would not wanna be those guys.
So, yeah, the story is good and it really shines in some places, but it's also not really wowing overall.
So. Is it a bad game? It is a bad game. I had a miserable time with it. But is it really a bad game? I mean, maybe it's not. If i close my eyes i can see so many great things about it. The locust system adds tension and stakes like you rarely see in a puzzle game. The UI manipulation is so fucking cool, i love how you don't actually need it to solve almost every puzzles where you can do it, it really feels like you're getting one over on the game. The mementos are a really cool way to tie the voided and non-voided routes together by adding depths to the puzzles the second way around and driving home that by eating the fruit you really just took the easy way out and there's a price to pay. See? there's things that i like. But that's only when closing my eyes. The truth is that i had a miserable time with it. That i got to the end saying "let this be over already". That i got to the middle saying "let this be over already", too. Maybe it's because i'm a stupid bitch who can't appreciate artistic complexities. Maybe it's because i'm a wimp who can't take on an actually tough challenge. Maybe... Maybe
I wish i had enjoyed this game, but i just really didn't. And for these defects, and for no other evil, we now are lost and punished just with this: We have no hope and yet we live in longing.
izzy806
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