Void Breaker looks like a game developed by a dozen or more people. It’s only a handful, but you’d never know it by how it looks. Eye-catching games by small teams, even one person, are rare but are becoming more frequent. Void Breaker is in line to be one of the impressive small studio games, so long as it emerges from Early Access stronger than it started. Based on my time with it, it is impressive, but it needs a few tweaks to break free into its own category of excellence.
We've seen games like Void Breaker before. It's a roguelite/FPS. Nearly a dime a dozen now. Its twist is making destruction an essential element to eliminating your enemies. Your grenades or other objects found in each arena can crumble parts of buildings, and if enemies are caught in the demolition, they're staggered and will drop health if you destroy them during that state. So far, it's an interesting tactic, though clunky.
Many enemies kept bearing down on me, forcing me away from the buildings because, like many arena-style shooters, it's most advantageous to circle around the middle. Running through the center opens you up to more damage, and the movement is so buttery smooth and fast that enemies take a while to catch up before it's time to drop the roof on them. It messes with the flow instead of being a natural extension of combat. But when you do catch several enemies under a massive demolition, it's like popping pinatas. I can hear the Grunt Birthday Party in my head.
In Void Breaker, you’re equipped with one gun. You will always have one gun. You can equip a pistol, or an assault rifle, or a sniper rifle, for example, but it always be one gun. Thankfully, that gun can be modified and buffed in so many ways. This extreme number of modifiers you can have is possible thanks to a sort of an equipment hex grid. Each slot can hold one mod, and you can move them wherever you need to maximize your firepower. Not every spot is unlocked from the beginning, though. You need other upgrades to unlock additional grid slots. On a good run, I received a buff that multiplied the damage of any adjacent upgrade, making my assault rifle unleash furious damage. The combinations seem endless, even though I came across a lot of the same mods.
Each run happens inside a world controlled by an AI. It's using various 'subjects' for an experiment. You’re one of the prisoners. I didn’t get a good sense of what the AI is trying to achieve, but dialogue and computer terminals slowly uncover what's been happening. The goal is to escape, but the AI sees everything, except for the hideout where you can use a variety of currencies to permanently upgrade yourself as you try, and fail, at each run.
Void Breaker is available in Early Access now, and based on some of the commentary, an old system that hampered the fun was entirely removed, which sounds like the developer is willing to make big changes to ensure the game remains fun and balanced. The destruction seems like it's not fitting right now, but I’d like to see it tweaked until it flows naturally with the combat because Void Breaker certainly has the bones to be an excellent shooter when it reaches version 1.0.
You can check out Void Breaker now, available on Steam Early Access. Stay tuned to GamingTrend.com for more on Void Breaker and many more games.
