The Void - Ice-Pick Lodge - PC

[IainC]

Those of you who complain that games today are formulaic and lacking in imagination should go and buy this game. You may well hate it but at least you'll have seen something original. The basic premise is that you're dead. Or maybe you're only kind of dead, people seem to be unclear on that. In any case you're in a kind of shadow realm which is notable for low-res stone textures and a pretty monochromatic palette. Everything is grey and washed out because to survive here you need colour. Living things have colour and you need to extract it from them and metabolise it in one of your hearts. Yes you can potentially have more than one. No this isn't explained particularly well.

So you suck colour out of things and this is called Lympha. You fill your hearts with it and you turn it into Nerva. Nerva is what you use to affect things around you. You can write glyphs with it which is basically spells via mouse gestures, you can attack things with it by scribbling all over them with colour and you can use it as bait to get small living things to come close enough that you can eat them. Different colours have different effects. All of this stuff happens in chambers which are little activity rooms full of things to do, trees or sparkly naked people. Between the chambers is the Void which is good and bad at the same time. Time only flows while you are in the Void. This means that your hearts are converting Lympha to Nerva and, every hundred seconds or so a new phase ticks over and your harvestable colour sources refresh. At the same time however your hearts are bleeding colour at a steady rate and, if they run out then you die. It's possible to not have enough harvestable colour to last a full phase which means that you'll die, your save point is worthless and you have to start again from before you fucked everything up - this will generally be right at the beginning.

The graphics are, bleakness aside, acceptable. The character models look a bit shiny and not well rendered (right down to somewhat amorphous genitalia) however the landscapes are nicely done. The afterlife apparently looks like Hieronymous Bosch and Theodor Geisel sat down with a lot of acid and worked it out between them. The sound pissed me off after about ten minutes so I muted it. There's only so much atonal cello music in a minor key that I can take.

Overall, this is an interesting but flawed adventure RPG. If you can get past a fairly steep learning curve and having to replay parts over and over again then you might well enjoy it.

Buy it.

[IainC]

[Engels]

Sounds interesting, but why is it an adventure RPG? What you described sounds like some sort of resource management game.

[IainC]

It's an adventure RPG because you are exploring the world, solving puzzles and trying to make sense of what is happening to you. NPCs don't always tell you the truth and sometimes they don't even know that they are wrong. You have to figure out what is real and what is not from your own experiences in the game. It's a bit like Myst meets Planescape: Torment except that it's nothing like either of those games. I don't know, perhaps my gaming lexicon doesn't have the tools to adequately describe this game. I do know that it's like nothing else I've ever played though.

Edit: I'm not the only one who found The Void hard to describe. Eurogamer, Rock-Paper-Shotgun and Bit-tech were lost for words too.

[gryeyes]

Sold

[Delmania]

I want.

[gryeyes]

Interesting game, when I get to the first "grove" I keep trying to paint the "donor" sigil but it seems to have no effect. What am I doing wrong?

[IainC]

You need to 'activate' the tree first by touching it with colour. Once you do that you enter a third person camera view of the tree where you paint your donor sigil.

[Yoru]

I've played an hour of this. It's interesting. I'm intrigued.

[Der Helm]

Interesting game, when I get to the first "grove" I keep trying to paint the "donor" sigil but it seems to have no effect. What am I doing wrong?

Try painting it really large (after "activating" the tree) and in the direction shown to you in the short cut scene (starting in the top right corner ?)

[Samwise]

Anyone know if this is going to be on Steam?

[Delmania]

Ask, and ye shall receive!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/37000/

[ffc]

I had to replay the beginning twice to even understand what I am doing.  Two quick questions:

1)  Why do I have to drag color from the right side of the screen to my heart only to drag it from my heart to the left side of the screen to use the color I eat instead of just being able to use the color I eat directly?

2)  When I draw a glyph to give a tree color, is there any benefit to drawing slow and holding the mouse button down longer or do I want to go as fast as I can to use less color?

[IainC]

1: Because colour in your heart is required to stay alive in the Void. Also only some of it will be metabolised into Nerva (the stuff that you use for drawing glyphs etc). Think of it like this; Lympha is your fuel reserve, colour in your hearts is fuel being used and Nerva is the finished product.

2: The more colour you use the greater the effect, this is true with Glyphs as well as with using colour for combat etc.

[Samwise]

Oh man, I'd have to find out this is on Steam the day of the TF2 update.  I'm definitely interested in giving this a whirl at some point though.

[trias_e]

I started this game today, and three hours later I'm on my third attempt starting from basically the beginning.  This game is bloody hard and it's quite easy to fuck yourself over.

That said...I love it so far.  Rare that a game can capture my interest like this while at the same time being brutally punishing and full of fail states.  The gameplay is very simple but at the same time quite captivating.  I'm constantly planning ahead for my future survival and feel a real sense of urgency.  I'm sure Pathologic would have been similar if weren't indecipherable and absurdly buggy.

[Pennilenko]

I want to like this game, but unfortunately, I have learned that I am not smart enough to figure out anything. I am completely lost and don't get how anything interacts. I enjoy genuinely hard games, but this one is too much for me to handle.

[Xuri]

For me this game failed when it refused to recognize the very first symbol it asked me to draw with my mouse-pointer, despite me copying the symbol to near perfection.

[IainC]

Yes, I found that it's time as well as shape sensitive. You need to match the speed for the sigil to work.

[hal]

Very good game. Something awful has a lets play in progress for those of a goon persuasion. Very artsy fartisy the core game is resource management and no clear gols. I really recommend the lets play on something aw full for a great walkthrough. Hes almost dome but cant finish the game until turn 30 (hes on 18ish as I remember). And hey since when did titties hurt (very artsy not sexual at all).

[ffc]

The key to drawing the donor glyph (the first symbol) is to make sure the top tail is higher than the loop.  Drawing speed doesn't matter.  I end up drawing a very tiny loop, like the one at 1:35 in this donor glyph example clip.  The in-game example is borderline incorrect.

The SA Let's Play should be a mandatory tutorial for the first three cycles or so.  He noted things I completely overlooked.

[bhodi]

The SA Let's Play should be a mandatory tutorial for the first three cycles or so.  He noted things I completely overlooked.

Indeed. I just spent like 4 hours watching the damn thing. Cool game, but to me it's more fun to watch than play.

[trias_e]

I am absolutely loving this game right now, but I admit it requires tons of patience and a bit of masochism.

Turning off the soundtrack is a really bad decision IMO.  The music gets better, does a good job of setting the scene for the sisters, and goes a long way in giving variety to the emotional impact of the game. 

[trias_e]

Massively important tip:

You go faster on the main map if you use more color to paint your path (up to 20).  You also go faster if you use blue to paint your path.  And of course you go faster if you have azure in your heart as well.  Combine these facts to haul ass across the map.  Very helpful later in the game.

[ffc]

Massively important tip:

You go faster on the main map if you use more color to paint your path (up to 20).  You also go faster if you use blue to paint your path.  And of course you go faster if you have azure in your heart as well.  Combine these facts to haul ass across the map.  Very helpful later in the game.

I laugh at how much I am totally missing.  My laughter sounds like crying.

[IainC]

This is now on Steam for $5.

Totally worth checking out for those of you who were curious but not so much that you'd import a copy.

[Samwise]

This is now on Steam for $5.

SOLD! 

I've been curious about this one, but with so many games on my list I figured if I bought it at full price I wouldn't get around to playing it until the next sale anyway.  Now I can throw it on the pile.

[Pennilenko]

This is now on Steam for $5.

SOLD! 

I've been curious about this one, but with so many games on my list I figured if I bought it at full price I wouldn't get around to playing it until the next sale anyway.  Now I can throw it on the pile.

I tried to play this game again, and yup the second attempt was mind numbingly impossible, I think I am too stupid for artsy fartsy games.

[Segoris]

Edit:  Wrong thread, sorry

[Samwise]

My only real complaint with this game is the slow walking speed.  There's a lot of walking around the different chambers(?) to collect plants and bugs, and there's no reason for it to take as long as it does, since time is "stopped" inside the chambers.  I fucked up my first game and am all set to go back and do a better job setting up my grove, but I'm not looking forward to the prospect of redoing all that walking.

[trias_e]

It gets much better when you are capable of having max azure in your heart at all times.  The difference is very noticeable.  But walking slowly does suck for the first few hours though when that isn't a possibility.  You will also get a 'haste' glyph fairly soon that will give you a nice temporary speed boost, so if you're in an impatient mood you can burn color to go even faster.

[Rasix]

This is easily the most fascinating and unique game I've played since I got into Dwarf Fortress.  It's just hard to describe the experience.. it just feels so new and out of place with current game offerings.  Just totally foreign, and I have no clue what certain things do and what the mechanics are behind them (like, can you "replant" trees?).

Started this up with the intent to only play about half and hour and played for 2 and a half straight. Restarted twice. 

This is the best 5 dollars I've ever spent.

[bhodi]

can you "replant" trees?

Yes, but they only give half color next time. In general, you shouldn't need to do it too many times, as the trees and mines on the north part of the map give way more color.

[Samwise]

What's the trick with the second sister (the one on the right of the two sisters you meet after the first one, the one in the temple sort of building)?  I want to get past her, but if I give her color to open her heart, she dies, and then I can't complete Mantid's quest so he skewers me.  Luckily I saved right before, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

[Rasix]

What's the trick with the second sister (the one on the right of the two sisters you meet after the first one, the one in the temple sort of building)?  I want to get past her, but if I give her color to open her heart, she dies, and then I can't complete Mantid's quest so he skewers me.  Luckily I saved right before, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

You should probably do the one on the left first as she requires a color you've already found.  The one on the right requires two colors you might not have much of at all and only likely through chance.

Also, are you giving the right color?  Wrong colors are either ignored or poison.

Sorry if you already know all of this.  Only played a couple sessions so far.