Void Bastards: Poor bastards from outer space

The future is not what it used to be. Spaceships do not plow the vastness of the universe, opening a new frontier of humanity. There are no apple trees blooming on Mars, and no one is ice fishing on the moons of Jupiter. Even well-deserved cyberpunk does not sparkle with neon in the rain, in which the moments of life melt away… But in our beloved era, there were not only the Fathers of Rock and Roll, but also the Fathers of science fiction. And the story of the unfortunate spacemen trapped in the Sargasso nebula seems to have come out of the pages of comic books, which the puny prototype of Marty McFly‘s father keeps on his bedside shelf.

Warm lamp fiction is already an established term in the circles of sci-fi enthusiasts. It includes the works of those very fathers: Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, Clark and many others. This is the very literature where the universe, although fraught with a lot of horrors, is knowable – there is a common language with all aliens, and there are ashtrays on every ship ploughing the vast expanses of space. Because what about space without a Venusian cigar and a good old glass of Martian whiskey with ice, mined straight from Pluto? Far beyond the solar system, you can catch a radio wave with newfangled cheeky rock and roll, unless you brought your favorite records with you. In this simple and understandable world of the eternal middle of the twentieth century, we are being carried away by 88 rockets. And they will be carried away again and again. Because reality is much more complicated than we would like, and the twentieth century still does not want to end. Retrofuturism is cozy and there is plenty of this style in interactive entertainment. And if the Fallout and Bioshock series give us a look at other versions of our home planet, the flight to analog stars is not so frequent. Someday I may talk about The Outer Worlds from Obsidian, but today we will talk about the native diamond hidden in the blackness of the void – the rogue shooter Void Bastards.

The Monty Python Galaxy

The Ark ship is a huge prison, drifting at the back of the universe in a nebula where hundreds of thousands of ships have found their eternal rest, and their passengers and crew have turned into mysterious translucent entities. Millions of prisoners were on board, subjected to “dehydration” for compactness: turned into a dry mixture like spices for doshirak. The only staff on it is an overly polite artificial intelligence, which resurrects one of the imprisoned “clients” to fix an engine failure, as well as to get the necessary documents, because without a piece of paper you are nobody. To do this, we will have to search through hundreds of abandoned space vessels, getting what we are looking for, as well as any other junk, and, if possible, staying alive. This goal is secondary: in case of death, the AI will create a new character. Then again. And more.

The story, or rather the setting itself, since the game is not very storylined, is clearly inspired by the British titans of humorous fiction, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, as well as comics published by 2000 AD. There’s a lot special about the latter. Our charges could well have been put in jail by Judge Dredd personally, and on the most cannibalistic articles. So most of the time we don’t play as a notorious thug, but as a victim of circumstances. Under the bright cover of the picture book, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil emerges in all its tragicomedy.

Dolya Vorovskaya: so, we have a bagel here where you need to loot ships. All of them are randomly generated, divided into several types according to layout, appearance and loot content: luxury liners have a lot of food and credits, tugboats store plenty of fuel, military cruisers store ammunition, and so on. There’s also a lot of random junk on everyone, and all this junk is needed to craft new barrels, armor, and more. The arsenal of tools pleases with its original design and usage variations. Kamikaze drone kittens are my absolute favorites!

Each ward character has original characteristics – perks. It can be a cough from a smoker character, ruining your stealth; color blindness, which does not allow you to distinguish an open door from a closed one; tall or short stature. So sometimes it’s quite beneficial to merge an unsuccessful avatar, for the sake of getting something more suitable for your style of play. And sometimes, on the contrary, it is extremely painful to lose it, even because of emotional attachment. It really works here, unlike similar solutions such as in The Darkest Dungeons. Perhaps because of the first-person perspective.

If the “world map” evokes emotions like curiosity and comfort from management, then the landings themselves are much more interesting emotionally. The fact is that Blue Manchu is not exactly a nouname. Jonathan Chey, the key programmer of System Shock 2, worked on this game. Perhaps it is through his efforts that each landing is perceived as a thriller, despite the comedic and satirical accents – it is not easy to survive, stealth is preferable, and each new room can bring new precious junk or an inglorious death, if you are lucky. You’ll have to make a choice every time, whether it’s worth it. And you will have to choose quickly, because oxygen is not infinite. It will last at least ten minutes. Sometimes it’s very adrenaline-fueled to escape to the shuttle, with a bunch of mutants and security bots on your tail. Permanent hunger for supplies will also be a frequent guest of yours: mutants respawn from certain points, but ammo does not. The complete absence of basic melee weapons can be placed in the piggy bank of alarming defenselessness. If you don’t have any bullets, you don’t have anything to attack with.

Another ship

And yet this game is not about stress. The amazing combination of a comedic tone and a certain severity of the dives themselves creates a sensual balance when you happily board another ship in search of new junk and in the process try not to catch the eye of heavy opponents, or, more often here, a crowd of small fry. And now you’ve miraculously escaped, it’s time to rest. But you’ll probably find valuable swag on the next ship, and random conditions are in your favor. Go ahead! Crafting, by the way, is so versatile that it gives you a storyline: it doesn’t matter how you get the necessary materials. But I don’t recommend rushing. There’s another ship waiting for you.

The beauty of two and a half dimensions

I’ve never seen a game where comic book styling would work so well. This game is not just stylish. She’s really beautiful. Sometimes you want to spend a few precious seconds (oxygen is being consumed relentlessly!) just to look at your surroundings. It doesn’t feel like all this cell-shading is a trick to hide graphic poverty, although it most likely is. But unlike a million indiretrouters, it looks as organic as possible here. The design of the opponents in pseudo-3D was also a success. The characters don’t look like cardboard layouts like in almost any GZDoom game. The lack of smooth animation looks appropriate here. The color palette smooths out all the corners. Even the fact that the characters are “floating” fits well into the setting: the mutants here are more like ghosts, absorbed by color from other worlds.

The game does not rely on retro stylistics. There is no nasty feeling that the authors could not be authors, but simply compiled everything they like into their supposedly creative work. On the contrary, I have a clear feeling that the game should look and sound exactly the way it sounds.

The notes of immersive simulators are evident in the sound design. Opponents are always mumbling nonsense, like splicers from Bioshock. The loudspeakers continue to broadcast their programmed messages to the dead. The syntwave soundtrack gives the appropriate realism to what is happening. The only comedic element is a harmonica sample, heralding the beginning and end of the combat phase. Well, an emphatically polite AI will remind you in a soothing voice that your death is an undesirable incident and is punishable by a fine.

I believe and laugh

Comedies are a very complex genre, and comedy fiction, in my opinion, is the most difficult of all. The viewer or player should not have the feeling that the imagined world was created solely for the sake of a joke. It’s very humiliating for characters and events to exist solely for fun. The world must live by its own laws, even if these laws are frankly parodic. It works in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, in Kin-dza-dze, in Futurama, and here.All the absurdities and hyperbole in Void Bastards are appropriate. You believe in all these robots with a design from the cartoon “Jacksons”, in cheese sandwiches as the basis of the astronauts’ diet and red cans of rocket fuel. They are funny, but real in their funniness. And for a blind convict serving a life sentence for not giving up his place to a corporate boss, this world is extremely serious and real. Toons can die too. And it’s still tragic, even if the reason is a piano that fell from the sky.

Result. Void Bastards is a small, well–built, well-functioning game. Without much pretense, like a recent issue of stories in pictures, it just does its job – it provides excellent entertainment. Just like the Horizon Chase Turbo I described earlier. Space bastards are great at fitting into small time slots without dragging it out too much. It is ideal for moral relaxation for half an hour or an hour.

Advantages and disadvantages

Positive
+ A perfectly working gameplay loop
+ Excellent optimization
+ Unique style

Cons
– The ending is somewhat disappointing
– The replay is not particularly interesting
– Towards the end the game feels unnecessarily routine

Pitfalls: Void Bastards can serve as a cure for “gaming impotence” if the patient is “already too old for video games.”