HALLOWEEN: VOTV

Hi. I like playing games quite a bit. As of writing this page, most of the articles on this website are about games, and for Halloween, I would like to talk about one game. A game that is now one of my favorite games of all time—not just one of my favorite horror games but one of my favorite games in general. And if you can believe it, it's free to play and still in development with much more to come! And that game is...drumroll, please...

VOICES OF THE VOID!!!

Spoiler warning: I will be talking about and showing a lot of my gameplay. I appreciate people reading this, but if you don't want spoilers, I suggest you stop reading. Get outta here and go play the game. If you dont care about spoilers, then keep on reading!

Note: Hi. Most of the pictures, videos, and experiences I show and talk about in this review come from my gameplay BEFORE the Pre-Alpha 0.8.0 update. So, if something looks or sounds a bit out of date, that's why.

My first exposure to Voices of the Void was a clip of Mr. Joel Vargskelethor playing the game.

When watching this for the first time, I laughed and then forgot about the game until a few months later while scrolling through Itch.io. I was bored and saw a little game called Voices of the Void and decided to try it out. I wasn't expecting much because, to be honest, for a while I've been a bit underwhelmed by a lot of games I've found this year for some reason, and I just haven't been able to enjoy many video games. But I gave it a shot, starting in the tutorial area and learning how to play the game.

The tutorial of this game is probably the first and only time I will actually talk about the tutorial of any game, and that's just because of a friend I made there. Everyone say hello to Shrimpus Shrimponlious the Shrimp. A wonderful companion while I explore this weird backrooms like area.

The best coworker I've ever had!

Besides my new friend, the tutorial was very helpful as it taught you the main gameplay feature of Voices of the Void: collecting signals from space!

See, you play as Dr. Kel, a little freak who's been sent out to a base in the forest to gather data from space and maintain the station. Every day you scan the skies for signals and gather data from the satellites before sending it back to your bosses for some pay. You can then use the points you earn to upgrade your computers, decorate your base, and buy food. Just sounds like a boring job sim, right? Dr. Kel gets up, works, eats some food, watches TV, and goes to bed.

Wait, don't we play games to escape reality?

If you want, you can even get some robot friends!

AWW!

That right there is the genius of this game. Its so boring and mundane at the start but slowly ramps things up. Even at the start, you already get hints that things are... off. This base you've been sent to clearly hasn't had any visitors in forever. There's trash everywhere in the dark building and roaches whereever you turn.

The base is also clearly supposed to be maintained by more than just one person, judging by the multiple offices you can find around the map. It's weird, but nothing too scary so far (ignore the mannequins). You just go back to doing your boring job and cleaning up the base as much as you can. Then you see it.

Hm, yes, our readings are saying we're in "Deep shit"

Meet your new best friend, The Radar! (sorry Shrimpus)

The radar lets you know what's going on in the forest, only showing things through dots on a screen. There will be dots representing Dr. Kel, your base, your ATV, bots, and nothing else.

Now quickly look back at your radar and notice all the other red dots showing up, especially at night.

Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

You may have also started getting some weird signals. Before, you were just getting very low-quality shots of asteroids and planets, but now you're getting spaceships? Not to mention the weird sounds, not just from recordings of signals but from around your base. ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT TIME.

Yeah, this game very quickly makes you paranoid. What little comfort you had in your repetitive work cycle is soon taken away. As you're traveling from satellite to satellite, you'll be glancing over your shoulder, CERTAIN that you heard a noise. Worst of all, someone has been stealing your shrimp... and it takes so long to cook!

Votv has a variety of in-game events that are designed to weird you out as much as possible. These events have a wide range of how horrifying they can be. Maybe your coworker leaves you some sushi, or maybe a demon starts stalking you because you haven't slept in a while. Maybe those damn aliens STEAL YOUR SHIRMP! Let's talk about those aliens, actually.

Voices of the Void, in its current pre-alpha state, doesn't have much of an in-game story. I'm not saying that as a negative or a positive, just saying, as for now, don't expect some grand narrative to go with this game. But there are characters you can meet, and those characters hint towards plans for a storyline later on in the game's development. Right now my favorite characters are the shrimp loving Arirals, an alien race the forest Dr. Kel is working in.

And I'm sure the internet will be very normal about the alien catgirls

One of my favorite moments in this game so far is when the Arirals first start appearing. They draw graffiti around your base, throw things at you, and they'll spam email you until you look at their spaceship parked outside your house. Yes, these aliens act like annoying teenagers and quickly turn the scariest nights into the funniest gaming moments.

They make fanart of themselves because even they know how cool they are

They enjoy shrimp a lot, and if you buy them some, they'll leave food for you in your room while you sleep. Eventually, you can find a treehouse camp that the visiting Arirals have built, which can easily be found by the campfire smoke. Did I mention you never actually see them because they're invisible? There's even more aliens and weird creatures too...

But at the end of the day, Dr. Kel needs to get those reports shipped to his boss! So ignore the demons, the mannequins stalking you, the aliens, the giant robot storming around the forest at night—you have work to do!

Seriously, go try out the game right now! You can download for free here. Again, still very early in development but already so fun. Also, the game is very beautiful.

And you can add silly decor to your base.

Salute the flag!

And you can make a disco room.