Void bastards is amazing at first when you don't know what you're doing and keep discovering neat ways to survive, but immediately becomes boring when you realize that going in guns blazing is the dominant strategy every time due to how the spawning mechanics works together with the resource economy
It really needed some bosses, puzzles and a bit more flesh to the universe and the nebula. The base game itself was quite good but barren after a while.
@@Virtualblueart Procedurally generated ship layouts would've helped add variety too. Gets too repetitive once you realize there are only a couple of pre-set layouts for each ship type.
it needed more fleshed out stealth and alternative routes with maybe vent specific enemies. When you try stealth it almost always ends in the enemy spotting you with the corner of their eye
The stylised aesthetic would be best described as graphic novel or comic book. Most notably work by Brian Bolland who was known for the use of deep shadws and crosshatching. From a developmnt perspective this is ideal for small teams or solo devs as the 2.5D style on NPCs means you never have to worry about complex rigging or the need to be good at mesh topology. Environments are also much faster to make as materials are usually flat colours with basic linework that doesn't need artist to spend over an hour maing a high-fideity image. Fortunately there's a rising interest in the "boomer shooter" genre with games immitating the likes of Doom and Duke Nukem where gamers are enjoying HD spritework.
Love this game but you're 100% correct, when it ends there's nothing to bring you back or make you consider different playstyles. That's fine for one-shot experiences that aren't meant to be replayed (Deadly Tower of Monsters comes to mind) but for a roguelite there NEEDS to be a final challenge to work towards, FTL certainly understood that but the similar game Convoy didn't, which is why it's in the same boat as Void Bastards. Excellent essay, the editing is top notch and the script flows very well, not having an annoying voice is a huge bonus as well. Looking forward to whatever comes next.
I believe we should be improving on these psuedo arcade games. One of which is designing the game to not have progression. And if it has progression? Make the endgame fun. The fun of RoR2 and Gunfire Reborn is unlocking stuff. That's a problem. We need more variety. We need interactable and hazardous environments. More importantly... we need to stop stuffing shops in these games. Imagine a Tetris shop. There I ruined your day.
1:59 man, the moment I heard that I just immediately went “HEY I KNOW THAT VOICE!” and yep I was right, that’s Kevin Brighting, voice of the narrator in the Stanley parable! It’s not really my type of game, but the fact they had him on (not just because he’s That Voice but I think he’s actually great for that computer/ai assistant type of character, it works really well) not to mention the great art direction gives me a lot of respect for this game. Great video :D
I loved Void Bastards, and I think you pretty much nailed it. I bought it on Day 1, the style and vibe of the whole thing was immaculate, and I really enjoyed the time I spent with it. But many hours in, I just lost the drive to keep going. I didn't hit a major roadblock or come up against any kind of miserable grind like other games I've stopped playing, but I also wasn't getting tantalisingly close to the next big progression goal, I wasn't honing my knowledge to theorise new killer builds that I could try next run. I was just... kinda doing the same things, reaching the same milestones in the same ways, predictably. And predictability is a death knell for this kind of game.
Void bastards reminds me a lot of the older game Heat Signature in that it's a heist game in space, but I felt like Heat Signature had a lot more replayability, though it was a top down game instead of a first person game- it had a lot of interesting things in it. You could need to extract a citizen off a ship, dock with the ship, use overwhelming firepower and time travel abilities to blast your way through the guards, throw down 5 packs of explosives into the room with the citizen you needed to extract, slow down time to throw a forcefield onto the citizen before he got blown up, and then read the future for 3 seconds to see where he'd get launched to when the explosives go off. Then as his shielded body was hurtled through the wall and glass of the ship into the void of space, directly to where you had predicted he'd be you teleport to him, grab him and then radio your ship to remotely pick you up before the ship you just stole him from has enough time to even call the guards.
I'm in limbo waiting for a game in a similar vein of Heat signature & Void bastards called Skin Deep, it's made by Blendo Games announced in 2021 release TBA but it looks cool and a bit immersive sim-y
@@snowfox6795 oh shit I didn't know Skin Deep was gonna be like Heat Signature! I love Blendo games. I love Atom Zombie Smasher. I love Heat Signature and I pretty much agree with the above. I played Heat Signature to the end and loved it so much played about halfway through a second campaign. Void Bastards didn't grab me. It has the interesting premise of Heat Signature, but its just a generic boomer shooter and the actual missions don't feel like you're sneaking around a ship. You're basically just shooting enemies on tiny levels.
Loved and hated Heat Signature, it has the same problems like in Void Bastards. Its too long and grindy for its own good and quickly gets repetitive. In both games, most players leave without completing even half the game because they just hit the wall and get bored
@@LazyBuddyBan this is true- I had a LOT of fun with heat signature, but in order to beat the game I had to sit down and just sort of... grind it. If they had halved the amount of missions, and made more interesting missions (and just with the mechanics they already have you could make some REALLY interesting missions) it would have made the game much, much better.
I prematurely abandoned it too.. and now I know why. It doesn’t need a sequel, just a really good mod to add all the skill curve and tension that the gameplay lacks
I don't "forget it" it's just once it's done, it's done, it doesn't have a good game loop and that's okay! It's a brilliant game, and I'm excited for the sequel that, as far as I'm aware, leans more to the rogulike aspect which I genuinely feel is what this game was missing
I actually quite liked the way void bastards ended. Thought it was remarkably fitting for the bureaucratic nightmare the setting builds - your reward for working so hard and risking your life? Dehydration and being dumped into orbit where in a few thousand years your dessicated remains will probably burn up. The unfairness, the jovial tone of an AI telling you the rules that absolutely are just in place to make your existence worse, the fact that most "criminals" on the ship are in for crimes like "bring pungent", "stealing biscuits" or "sneezing in the presence of an executive". It's quite an interesting environment and while maybe some kind of big finale could've been cool, I feel like the ending as it was made excellent thematic sense - my response was "I don't know what else I expected but this fits brilliantly." Anyway, glad to see a video talking about this game.
I didn't forget! Need more. Excited for Wild Bastards but Void should have been longer and I hope it gets a more expansive sequel in the same setting with more cat and mouse mechanics. If they're going more combat oriented in Wild that's cool but my favorite parts of Void were the hair raising moments where the gigachad citizen was right around the corner and you have zero ammo and almost no health and a daring dangerous dash to the airlock. The feeling of helplessness in that game is peak when you exhaust your resources
Another issue i've had with Void Bastards is it's slow progression towards complex mechanics which lead to interesting gameplay interactions with eachother, and since such things are a staple of the genre, the game feels horribly rigid. While they are in-game, and you can use gadgets and weapons in smart ways to get situation in your favour, you are almost never forced to experiment and improvise on the spot, as your supply stockpile is pretty generous and more often than not it's more effective to slowly crawl around corners. I'll compare it to another breaking-into-spaceships-in-a-weirdly-dytopian-galaxy game - Heat Signature. The main difference in design philosophy of which is that it's mechanics are way more basic, but there are way, way more ways they interlock with eachother. Say, firing your weapons in Void Bastards is usually limited to 3 uses at most - you can fire to damage enemies, to trigger enviromental hazards or to distract enemies with gunfire. I haven't been in a situation where i used guns to do more than any of these three things. In Heat Signature, however, firing your main gun can lead to a cascading chain of events triggered by eachother. You can easily miss your shot because your character has alzheimers, and hit a shielded enemy instead, which would make your bullet ricochet into a room full of fuel. That room would then explode, sucking out the only guard with a keycard in this area of the ship, making traversal by foot impossible because your target is behind a locked room. However, since there's a giant hole in the spaceship now, you may as well try to dock your pod into it and maybe you can find another way to get past the roadblock. For this reason, i have clocked nearly 50 hours in Heat Signature and dropped Void Bastards after 6 hours. It's slowness is not compensated by complexity.
i love this game, got it in a humble bundle and got hooked right away :D the visuals and the humor are right up my alley🤭 the gameplay was a bit rough at first but it kinda grew on me in the end. Great video
I remember seeing a fantasy version of the game.However I can't remember the name,just the gameplay. Some kid with a stick was going around collecting party-members to get past metroidvania-style obstacles. Everything was a lot more colourful & anime.The exact same 2D-sprites-in-3D-space but not as colorwashed.
You have a perfect narration voice man, this video is great! I like the simple editing, it feels much more straightforward like an actual video essay compared to overedited stuff. Great man!
It's so weird that I was just thinking about the game two days ago and then this vid popped up By the by, I think the bit about objectives in games stands out in a really good way - the contrast between the energy and passion in those 30 seconds and the almost monotone of the rest of the video is very charming.
Beautiful video. I've always wondered why Void Bastards was overlooked. Everything about the game oozes passion. The soundtrack is great. The humor is well done. The art style, forget it. Love your channel, keep it up man, you have a great cadence in your voice. Sending love!
Honestly, I do understand why monotony sets in with Void Bastards. It isn't just the lack of a final challenge, but the lack of the core thing Rogue-likes and -Lites have going for them, which is the the chaotic difficulty based on item combos and weapon choices, offered during runs. Whether it is a pure power trip or an 18-karat run of bad luck, Void Bastards has nothing that sets apart the individual runs, and the lack of a final hurdle to overcome with either insane power or scraps, just really emphasizes that.
I never see enough Void Bastards content, great vid! It's not sloppy, just unpolished and the fact you notice it shows that you're a lot more capable of improving your videos than you think. Hope you get enough motivation to make more because this video really is good
I never forgot. This is a rare game of this scale that occasionally just barges into my mind like hey remember cat bombs? I like hades, it’s a better game in many ways, but it doesn’t invade my psyche the same way at all. This one’s really lodged up there for some reason. I think there’s for sure a market for games that blueball you. One of the things I liked about void bastards was the endless excuse to keep breaking into ships and running from ghosts. I think if the core gameplay really clicks with the player there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with just letting it play forever. That said, it’s certainly a niche thing and moreso a niche within a niche, I reckon you’d need a microscope to perceive the venn diagram of roguelike immersive sim enjoyers and gamer gooners. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t stick with me. The stand out aesthetics definitely help as well.
So well said. This game just resonates with me in a way that only this game does, and it has a bit of a sandboxy type feel to me. Pretty much always have at least one Void Bastards campaign going
Before watching: I know why I 'forgot' it, because it has the absolute worst ending possible. I loved the entire game up until then. It may as well have ended with you waking up and deciding it was all a dream and none of it mattered. I don't know why they went with that ending, it seemed like a nod to Red Dwarf and Ace Rimmer's ending, but far more meaningless.
I can't argue the repetition feeling behind it, but I can say that I keep coming to it from time to time, and it gives me joy! Very fun game, love the style, and the dark humour in it! Definitely going to get wild bastards as well.
Ah, your video essay jusy brought on old memories of this game for me. From what I can recall, I had a fun time for a good while, and then got bored from the lack of challenge as I got more powerful, and how the gameplay became more repetitive and stale as time went on. So it seems you hit the nail dead centre.
Found your channel through this and wanted to say its a fantastic video! It reminds me of Raycevick, and I say that only with the utmost kindness. Fantastic work.
I could agree that perhaps many people forgot this game for the reasons mentioned here... but I absolutely love pretty much everything about this game and still play it all the time. The emergent gameplay here is absolutely top notch, the unlockable challenges are great, the use of liminal spaces and capturing that feeling of isolation in space... I feel like if this game had a storyline that was more grandiose, or with big bosses, it would lose something. I thought the ending was perfect, and what compelled me to play the game again and again was the ships, and the way that every single one gave me a different experience, even though they are hand drawn and not procedural, just based on my inventory, enemies aboard, hazards, security, etc. I've had more things happen in this game where I thought, holy shit let me snag that last 30 seconds of footy real quick. Anyway, great video though with valid points - I would totally recommend this game though myself. Super stoked on Wild Bastards - it's looking like the shooting is going to be a bit more important this go around, and it also seems the story probably has a bit more of a presence in the game.
A tiny channel putting out a top essay on one of the most underrated games of recent years (even if every criticism is valid) Void Bastards is a fun time, it doesn't have the legs to run alongside its competition in the genre but it is great. Really good video man GG
Hey man, nice video. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff in the future. I think one of the things that held the game back was that fps rogue likes are still a strange genre for many players. Fps players generally seem to gravitate towards either multiplayer or sport focused experiences, and this game doesn't really fit either of those molds.
I adored this game and will definitely check out any follow up. That said, you pretty nailed it. It was a nice ride, but I haven’t felt any need to revisit it.
I really like the way you pace your edits in your content. Also, your voice is S tier for listening. It's giving Spike from Cowboy Bepop x Solid Snake from PS1 Metal Gear Solid minus the smoking habit. 69K views, everybody stop watching. JK, keep getting back in that saddle, mate, if you love it. This particular video has inspired me to get back to fighting. Thanks for the inspo.
I had a blast with Void Bastards. Beat it on Hard, and played through half another run on the hard bastard/ironman. Which I do wish was unlocked from the start. Fun game that I beat in like 20 hours. Fantastic crisp art style.
You forget to mention the traits system. My fear of loosing a character with good traits and getting one with crap ones made me play super cautiously, refusing to venture into lower levels unless forced to by instant death obstacles.
I wanted to love Void bastards, the art style and vibe are immaculate but the gameplay loop is a loop in the worst way, you just go around in a circle over and over, yah maybe the enemies get more difficult but you don't really get any real sense of progression.. the thing about roguelikes/lites is you get more powerful as you go. or at least, you turn out different every time, you pick the order you get stuff in VB but it's the same stuff, and by the end you'll have all of it. it really would have benefitted from a perk system, or something just to make you more powerful but different every time, instant replay value. I also feel that it and Wild bastards (there's a demo on steam for anyone that's curious) would be improved by multiplayer. though that probably would have just turned it into lethal company. great video, really liked the editing.
I still kind of remember the outline of my experience with the game. Saw some fanart from an artist I really liked, played the game, died early maybe 12 times? But once I got the gun that can teleport, displace or just remove enemies from play if you never place them again, I ended up beating the game with that character from mostly beginning to end, and then suddenly the ending happened and I was left confused.
seeing this video made me wanna install it again, when i played it back in 2019 i thought it was rather disappointing, but playing it again its definitely grown on me and I'm enjoying it way more, but yeah it needed a boss fight at the end for sure
Void Bastards also has some mechanics it's clearly hoping raise the tension but end up just being annoying: 1. Some vessels have intermittent power outages, meaning absolutely nothing works until you go to the generator and turn it back on. You can't leave, you can't loot chests, and you can't replenish your oxygen. Worse, on some ships the time before yet another outage is only a couple of minutes 2. Your oxygen is finite on nearly every ship. You have to keep going back to the atmo room to stock up and even THAT is a limited supply. Combine with power outages for extra annoyance 3. Randomly placed hazards that, in some permutations, present no way to get to an important part of the ship without taking damage 4. Void whales on the system map that randomly move around. If they land on your location and you have no torpedoes it's instant death. There is no option to escape and you do not start with any torpedoes 5. No fallback melee weapon. Out of ammo? You flat out can't attack 6. Exploding enemies that visually imply their blast radius with a circular blast effect... that's smaller than the actual damage radius. You'll shoot one of these guys, see a blue circle radiate outwards, think "whew that was close. I just got out of range-- Hey, wait, what?", and take damage anyway
I die try making it towards the end, yet I got nowhere but die again for no reason but it was fun playing through a game that has a lot of cool ideas in it.
I agree with this analysis. The core gameplay was good, I thought it had more potential than it realised, to me, it felt rather two-dimensional, both literally and figuratively. Thanks for the heads-up about Wild Bastards. I'll go have a look at that when it comes out.
Played wild bastards by now, and as far as I can tell, it did a lot of things better than void bastards. For one, while ironman still isn't the default, it broke up the campaign into shorter "checkpoint" like sections, making the next major unlock never feeling too far away while making death not too punishing. Secondly, the planets are randomised. Not sure if the arenas are, but the resource strategy is, which is a plus for replayability. However, the game does loose its teeth a bit the more outlaws you unlock as it is quite possible to tonic brute force someone onto the last planet while loosing on every single one once you get past 8 - that is a whole backup team for the largest planet size.
It was really fun game and I really enjoyed the comic book art style mixed with 2D sprites in a 3D environment, but it also suffered from lack luster content to which the only thing they added was a weapon dlc pack that should of been added to the game as a free update. something that would have been a nice incentive would be having to unlock character traits by simply play and or completing certain challenges, a lot like how you unlock items in the binding of Isaac, because that would encourage players to play more and have something to work towards. I'm praying that their next game won't suffer from the same fate as VB did. Also, as of me posting this void bastards are is $30 for whatever reason.
It's not just the lack of a good finale. There's also a bit too little in the way of variation in playstyles, traits, equipment, enemies, ships etc for there to be compelling reasons to replay it. A game like for example Binding of Isaac has hundreds of different weapon combinations making every run more unique. And there's not really much in the way of goals or motivation to win the game more than once (except iron man mode I guess), compared to many other roguelikes that unlock more stuff after the first ending. Gotta say this video did get me a little interested in trying an iron man run though! And I gotta check out Wild bastards - thanks for the info about that one :)
I actually ran into a similar problem when playing void bastards, the art style and whimsy drew me in but I found the substance lacking. I agree with your points and I am excited to see the future
I never really forgot it. I played through it, and exhausted all content in it. After ducking under that bulkhead in that networking-computer room for the 800th time every room just started to feel samey to me. IF there was more variation in the individual rooms I think i would have gotten more out of it.
I really like the core gameplay of Void Bastards but you are 100% correct on how underwhelming the end is. Also I hate Screws/Trusty Screws. Having an enemy that is nearly impossible to deal with to the point that the game actually tells you to just avoid them feels like a cardinal sin in a roguelike. Roguelikes are supposed to be very challenging but the core of what makes the genre is overcoming that challenge. Having an enemy that you're legit not even supposed to fight that is purposefully over tweaked to basically force this seems backwards and counterproductive to the genre.
OK, this was one of the best reviews I've ever seen from someone with so few subscribers. Please keep at it! Otherwise, on topic, I think there's another element here. Roguelikes typically keep their play sessions short, so the player doesn't have time to get heavily invested in any particular run. A winning run might take an hour or two. But at the point a single playthrough could take 5-10 hours and require multiple sessions, you're starting to move into different territory, the hybrid space inhabited by oddballs like Road 96 and Way Of The Samurai which blend rogue-ish elements with a more "choose your own adventure" storytelling format. With games like those, replays are about exploring the story branches and roleplaying possibilities, not just continuing to endlessly grind for loot and upgrades. Seems like that could have been another way Void Bastards could have helped itself stand out, and stay compelling over time.
The weapon restriction challenge runs are where the game really shines: Firearms Only, Indirect Only, Devices Only, Unarmed, and Only Essential. For each one of those there are enemies and hazards that you become unable to deal with and you really have to get creative. If the challenge runs were more apparent to casual players, I think there would be more people coming back for seconds and thirds.
I really liked the game and was excited to see where it went, how it changed with updates only to learn it released 1 DLC 4 months after release and then stopped updating more or less, felt really weird. There's a lot of problems with the game, negative traits are too easy to remove and replace making them irrelevant after 2 levels, no replay ability which is weird for a roguelike, and more. Game feels like it has tons of potential that was never properly tapped into
It doesn't help that it ends on a bad joke that effectively undermines all the efforts the player went through. So not only is there no mechanical climax, though some of the final area citizens can be quite a challenge, but you also have no narrative climax or relief either, which is a nice one-two punch to the player's enjoyment. The worst part is, they weren't dumb about this. You mention it, but Void Bastards comes with a lot more than just iron man mode. There are half a dozen different conditional modifiers to the game, my favorite being no parts, but all citizens drop loot instead, which gives a good reason to engage with the combat. So as designers they knew to give the player something to come back to, and did so with aplomb, but they failed to realize that the ending of each run is going to deflate whatever good will the unlocked modes(which are unlocked via a point gain system at the end of runs) give. To spin around for a moment, I'm hoping for something akin to Ziggurat's systems, which not only have a GOOD climax(not great, but good), but also spread the unlocks around a bit, so it's not a linear unlock cycle that doesn't always work unless you REALLY want to push yourself.
I started replaying it not long ago, I feel it doesn’t have much replayability but it’s quite fun. When it takes so long to unlock and upgrade everything it makes me not want to start a new run, just one is meaty enough I feel
The worst sin you can commit as a roguelike is ending after killing mom.
Void Bastatds forgot to put a mom in the first place.
I imagine how confused someone who never played Isaac would be
you forgot pirate mommy.
This is so spot on, well said.
@@keyman245 thank you for making a joke while explaining the joke.
Why would you kill a mom?
Or is there like a creature called: "mom"?
Void bastards is amazing at first when you don't know what you're doing and keep discovering neat ways to survive, but immediately becomes boring when you realize that going in guns blazing is the dominant strategy every time due to how the spawning mechanics works together with the resource economy
It really needed some bosses, puzzles and a bit more flesh to the universe and the nebula.
The base game itself was quite good but barren after a while.
@@Virtualblueart Procedurally generated ship layouts would've helped add variety too. Gets too repetitive once you realize there are only a couple of pre-set layouts for each ship type.
it needed more fleshed out stealth and alternative routes with maybe vent specific enemies. When you try stealth it almost always ends in the enemy spotting you with the corner of their eye
@@robots9146 "only a couple of pre-set layouts for each ship type" Uh, that is actually how ships work IRL. You realize they're mass produced, right?
@@swissarmyknight4306 okay and? the discussion was on how to make the game more fun, not more realistic. Realistic does not always equal fun.
if this doesn't pop off please don't get discouraged, this is great!
Oh, it poppin
@@DariaM00re😂
I think this "sloppy" style is actually very elegant, and if it's quicker to produce, you should use it.
I also, enjoy a good sloppy
I don’t know if “sloppy” is a good word, it feels like a graphic novel or comic book.
The stylised aesthetic would be best described as graphic novel or comic book. Most notably work by Brian Bolland who was known for the use of deep shadws and crosshatching.
From a developmnt perspective this is ideal for small teams or solo devs as the 2.5D style on NPCs means you never have to worry about complex rigging or the need to be good at mesh topology. Environments are also much faster to make as materials are usually flat colours with basic linework that doesn't need artist to spend over an hour maing a high-fideity image.
Fortunately there's a rising interest in the "boomer shooter" genre with games immitating the likes of Doom and Duke Nukem where gamers are enjoying HD spritework.
@@KryyssTV @tylerhilpisch7850
The comments are talking about the video format, self described as "sloppy", not the game it covers.
Love this game but you're 100% correct, when it ends there's nothing to bring you back or make you consider different playstyles. That's fine for one-shot experiences that aren't meant to be replayed (Deadly Tower of Monsters comes to mind) but for a roguelite there NEEDS to be a final challenge to work towards, FTL certainly understood that but the similar game Convoy didn't, which is why it's in the same boat as Void Bastards.
Excellent essay, the editing is top notch and the script flows very well, not having an annoying voice is a huge bonus as well. Looking forward to whatever comes next.
I believe we should be improving on these psuedo arcade games. One of which is designing the game to not have progression. And if it has progression? Make the endgame fun. The fun of RoR2 and Gunfire Reborn is unlocking stuff. That's a problem. We need more variety. We need interactable and hazardous environments. More importantly... we need to stop stuffing shops in these games. Imagine a Tetris shop. There I ruined your day.
1:59 man, the moment I heard that I just immediately went “HEY I KNOW THAT VOICE!” and yep I was right, that’s Kevin Brighting, voice of the narrator in the Stanley parable! It’s not really my type of game, but the fact they had him on (not just because he’s That Voice but I think he’s actually great for that computer/ai assistant type of character, it works really well) not to mention the great art direction gives me a lot of respect for this game. Great video :D
I loved Void Bastards, and I think you pretty much nailed it. I bought it on Day 1, the style and vibe of the whole thing was immaculate, and I really enjoyed the time I spent with it. But many hours in, I just lost the drive to keep going. I didn't hit a major roadblock or come up against any kind of miserable grind like other games I've stopped playing, but I also wasn't getting tantalisingly close to the next big progression goal, I wasn't honing my knowledge to theorise new killer builds that I could try next run. I was just... kinda doing the same things, reaching the same milestones in the same ways, predictably. And predictability is a death knell for this kind of game.
Void bastards reminds me a lot of the older game Heat Signature in that it's a heist game in space, but I felt like Heat Signature had a lot more replayability, though it was a top down game instead of a first person game- it had a lot of interesting things in it.
You could need to extract a citizen off a ship, dock with the ship, use overwhelming firepower and time travel abilities to blast your way through the guards, throw down 5 packs of explosives into the room with the citizen you needed to extract, slow down time to throw a forcefield onto the citizen before he got blown up, and then read the future for 3 seconds to see where he'd get launched to when the explosives go off. Then as his shielded body was hurtled through the wall and glass of the ship into the void of space, directly to where you had predicted he'd be you teleport to him, grab him and then radio your ship to remotely pick you up before the ship you just stole him from has enough time to even call the guards.
I'm in limbo waiting for a game in a similar vein of Heat signature & Void bastards called Skin Deep, it's made by Blendo Games announced in 2021 release TBA but it looks cool and a bit immersive sim-y
@@snowfox6795 oh shit I didn't know Skin Deep was gonna be like Heat Signature! I love Blendo games. I love Atom Zombie Smasher.
I love Heat Signature and I pretty much agree with the above. I played Heat Signature to the end and loved it so much played about halfway through a second campaign. Void Bastards didn't grab me. It has the interesting premise of Heat Signature, but its just a generic boomer shooter and the actual missions don't feel like you're sneaking around a ship. You're basically just shooting enemies on tiny levels.
Loved and hated Heat Signature, it has the same problems like in Void Bastards.
Its too long and grindy for its own good and quickly gets repetitive.
In both games, most players leave without completing even half the game because they just hit the wall and get bored
@@LazyBuddyBan this is true- I had a LOT of fun with heat signature, but in order to beat the game I had to sit down and just sort of... grind it.
If they had halved the amount of missions, and made more interesting missions (and just with the mechanics they already have you could make some REALLY interesting missions) it would have made the game much, much better.
You sound like a young version of the Toonami guy- Dead ass love it.
Dead ass no cap frfr 😩
You mean Steve Blum?
I think he sounds like Raycevick
I prematurely abandoned it too.. and now I know why. It doesn’t need a sequel, just a really good mod to add all the skill curve and tension that the gameplay lacks
I don't "forget it" it's just once it's done, it's done, it doesn't have a good game loop and that's okay! It's a brilliant game, and I'm excited for the sequel that, as far as I'm aware, leans more to the rogulike aspect which I genuinely feel is what this game was missing
I actually quite liked the way void bastards ended. Thought it was remarkably fitting for the bureaucratic nightmare the setting builds - your reward for working so hard and risking your life? Dehydration and being dumped into orbit where in a few thousand years your dessicated remains will probably burn up. The unfairness, the jovial tone of an AI telling you the rules that absolutely are just in place to make your existence worse, the fact that most "criminals" on the ship are in for crimes like "bring pungent", "stealing biscuits" or "sneezing in the presence of an executive".
It's quite an interesting environment and while maybe some kind of big finale could've been cool, I feel like the ending as it was made excellent thematic sense - my response was "I don't know what else I expected but this fits brilliantly."
Anyway, glad to see a video talking about this game.
I didn't forget! Need more. Excited for Wild Bastards but Void should have been longer and I hope it gets a more expansive sequel in the same setting with more cat and mouse mechanics.
If they're going more combat oriented in Wild that's cool but my favorite parts of Void were the hair raising moments where the gigachad citizen was right around the corner and you have zero ammo and almost no health and a daring dangerous dash to the airlock. The feeling of helplessness in that game is peak when you exhaust your resources
Another issue i've had with Void Bastards is it's slow progression towards complex mechanics which lead to interesting gameplay interactions with eachother, and since such things are a staple of the genre, the game feels horribly rigid. While they are in-game, and you can use gadgets and weapons in smart ways to get situation in your favour, you are almost never forced to experiment and improvise on the spot, as your supply stockpile is pretty generous and more often than not it's more effective to slowly crawl around corners.
I'll compare it to another breaking-into-spaceships-in-a-weirdly-dytopian-galaxy game - Heat Signature. The main difference in design philosophy of which is that it's mechanics are way more basic, but there are way, way more ways they interlock with eachother. Say, firing your weapons in Void Bastards is usually limited to 3 uses at most - you can fire to damage enemies, to trigger enviromental hazards or to distract enemies with gunfire. I haven't been in a situation where i used guns to do more than any of these three things.
In Heat Signature, however, firing your main gun can lead to a cascading chain of events triggered by eachother. You can easily miss your shot because your character has alzheimers, and hit a shielded enemy instead, which would make your bullet ricochet into a room full of fuel. That room would then explode, sucking out the only guard with a keycard in this area of the ship, making traversal by foot impossible because your target is behind a locked room. However, since there's a giant hole in the spaceship now, you may as well try to dock your pod into it and maybe you can find another way to get past the roadblock.
For this reason, i have clocked nearly 50 hours in Heat Signature and dropped Void Bastards after 6 hours. It's slowness is not compensated by complexity.
i love this game, got it in a humble bundle and got hooked right away :D the visuals and the humor are right up my alley🤭
the gameplay was a bit rough at first but it kinda grew on me in the end. Great video
I remember seeing a fantasy version of the game.However I can't remember the name,just the gameplay.
Some kid with a stick was going around collecting party-members to get past metroidvania-style obstacles.
Everything was a lot more colourful & anime.The exact same 2D-sprites-in-3D-space but not as colorwashed.
I didn't forget void bastards, it's a great game, I still recommend it to people sometimes.
You have a perfect narration voice man, this video is great! I like the simple editing, it feels much more straightforward like an actual video essay compared to overedited stuff. Great man!
It's so weird that I was just thinking about the game two days ago and then this vid popped up
By the by, I think the bit about objectives in games stands out in a really good way - the contrast between the energy and passion in those 30 seconds and the almost monotone of the rest of the video is very charming.
Your laugh at the end, is such a nice touch. Glad you left it in.
A good salesman does not sell good goods, rather they sell goods well.
Why Did We Forget Void Bastards: A Subversive Masterpiece
Beautiful video.
I've always wondered why Void Bastards was overlooked. Everything about the game oozes passion. The soundtrack is great. The humor is well done. The art style, forget it. Love your channel, keep it up man, you have a great cadence in your voice. Sending love!
Honestly, I do understand why monotony sets in with Void Bastards.
It isn't just the lack of a final challenge, but the lack of the core thing Rogue-likes and -Lites have going for them, which is the the chaotic difficulty based on item combos and weapon choices, offered during runs. Whether it is a pure power trip or an 18-karat run of bad luck, Void Bastards has nothing that sets apart the individual runs, and the lack of a final hurdle to overcome with either insane power or scraps, just really emphasizes that.
I never see enough Void Bastards content, great vid! It's not sloppy, just unpolished and the fact you notice it shows that you're a lot more capable of improving your videos than you think. Hope you get enough motivation to make more because this video really is good
I never forgot. This is a rare game of this scale that occasionally just barges into my mind like hey remember cat bombs? I like hades, it’s a better game in many ways, but it doesn’t invade my psyche the same way at all. This one’s really lodged up there for some reason.
I think there’s for sure a market for games that blueball you. One of the things I liked about void bastards was the endless excuse to keep breaking into ships and running from ghosts. I think if the core gameplay really clicks with the player there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with just letting it play forever. That said, it’s certainly a niche thing and moreso a niche within a niche, I reckon you’d need a microscope to perceive the venn diagram of roguelike immersive sim enjoyers and gamer gooners. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t stick with me. The stand out aesthetics definitely help as well.
So well said. This game just resonates with me in a way that only this game does, and it has a bit of a sandboxy type feel to me. Pretty much always have at least one Void Bastards campaign going
neat stuff, deserves more then 30 likes
This game has THE Narrator, now I'm really confused on why it's been forgotten
Bro loved this game and this video essay, keep it up my man :)
Before watching: I know why I 'forgot' it, because it has the absolute worst ending possible. I loved the entire game up until then. It may as well have ended with you waking up and deciding it was all a dream and none of it mattered. I don't know why they went with that ending, it seemed like a nod to Red Dwarf and Ace Rimmer's ending, but far more meaningless.
I can't argue the repetition feeling behind it, but I can say that I keep coming to it from time to time, and it gives me joy! Very fun game, love the style, and the dark humour in it! Definitely going to get wild bastards as well.
Ah, your video essay jusy brought on old memories of this game for me. From what I can recall, I had a fun time for a good while, and then got bored from the lack of challenge as I got more powerful, and how the gameplay became more repetitive and stale as time went on. So it seems you hit the nail dead centre.
Dang, what a great channel to find!
I like the sentiment of this title because I play this game like every week.
Found your channel through this and wanted to say its a fantastic video! It reminds me of Raycevick, and I say that only with the utmost kindness. Fantastic work.
I could agree that perhaps many people forgot this game for the reasons mentioned here... but I absolutely love pretty much everything about this game and still play it all the time. The emergent gameplay here is absolutely top notch, the unlockable challenges are great, the use of liminal spaces and capturing that feeling of isolation in space... I feel like if this game had a storyline that was more grandiose, or with big bosses, it would lose something. I thought the ending was perfect, and what compelled me to play the game again and again was the ships, and the way that every single one gave me a different experience, even though they are hand drawn and not procedural, just based on my inventory, enemies aboard, hazards, security, etc. I've had more things happen in this game where I thought, holy shit let me snag that last 30 seconds of footy real quick. Anyway, great video though with valid points - I would totally recommend this game though myself. Super stoked on Wild Bastards - it's looking like the shooting is going to be a bit more important this go around, and it also seems the story probably has a bit more of a presence in the game.
A tiny channel putting out a top essay on one of the most underrated games of recent years (even if every criticism is valid)
Void Bastards is a fun time, it doesn't have the legs to run alongside its competition in the genre but it is great.
Really good video man GG
Hey man, nice video. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff in the future. I think one of the things that held the game back was that fps rogue likes are still a strange genre for many players. Fps players generally seem to gravitate towards either multiplayer or sport focused experiences, and this game doesn't really fit either of those molds.
One of my favourite games ever!
I can´t wait for BlueManchu´s next game!
Its literally because it has enough content to be fun for a long time, but eventually you will have seen everything.
I had forgotten about Void Bastards, great video and I hope for more!
You using the Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator OST is ***top***. Mad respect.
Thanks for remembering me about the Game i wishlisted a while ago.
solid, good quality. Keep this up, you'll find an audience.
I still hop back into this pretty regularly.
I adored this game and will definitely check out any follow up. That said, you pretty nailed it. It was a nice ride, but I haven’t felt any need to revisit it.
Ok, 2 sentence in, subscribed instantly
I really like the way you pace your edits in your content. Also, your voice is S tier for listening. It's giving Spike from Cowboy Bepop x Solid Snake from PS1 Metal Gear Solid minus the smoking habit.
69K views, everybody stop watching. JK, keep getting back in that saddle, mate, if you love it. This particular video has inspired me to get back to fighting. Thanks for the inspo.
I had a blast with Void Bastards. Beat it on Hard, and played through half another run on the hard bastard/ironman. Which I do wish was unlocked from the start.
Fun game that I beat in like 20 hours. Fantastic crisp art style.
You forget to mention the traits system. My fear of loosing a character with good traits and getting one with crap ones made me play super cautiously, refusing to venture into lower levels unless forced to by instant death obstacles.
Awesome video, I remembered my first and last attempt at void bastards and I agree there was so much potential
Your video essays are amazing
I loved playing Void Bastards. Also that Space Warlord Organ Trading Sim soundtrack slaps. Suddenly learned about that game too.
I wanted to love Void bastards, the art style and vibe are immaculate but the gameplay loop is a loop in the worst way, you just go around in a circle over and over, yah maybe the enemies get more difficult but you don't really get any real sense of progression.. the thing about roguelikes/lites is you get more powerful as you go. or at least, you turn out different every time, you pick the order you get stuff in VB but it's the same stuff, and by the end you'll have all of it.
it really would have benefitted from a perk system, or something just to make you more powerful but different every time, instant replay value. I also feel that it and Wild bastards (there's a demo on steam for anyone that's curious) would be improved by multiplayer. though that probably would have just turned it into lethal company.
great video, really liked the editing.
I still kind of remember the outline of my experience with the game.
Saw some fanart from an artist I really liked, played the game, died early maybe 12 times? But once I got the gun that can teleport, displace or just remove enemies from play if you never place them again, I ended up beating the game with that character from mostly beginning to end, and then suddenly the ending happened and I was left confused.
seeing this video made me wanna install it again, when i played it back in 2019 i thought it was rather disappointing, but playing it again its definitely grown on me and I'm enjoying it way more, but yeah it needed a boss fight at the end for sure
Void Bastards also has some mechanics it's clearly hoping raise the tension but end up just being annoying:
1. Some vessels have intermittent power outages, meaning absolutely nothing works until you go to the generator and turn it back on. You can't leave, you can't loot chests, and you can't replenish your oxygen. Worse, on some ships the time before yet another outage is only a couple of minutes
2. Your oxygen is finite on nearly every ship. You have to keep going back to the atmo room to stock up and even THAT is a limited supply. Combine with power outages for extra annoyance
3. Randomly placed hazards that, in some permutations, present no way to get to an important part of the ship without taking damage
4. Void whales on the system map that randomly move around. If they land on your location and you have no torpedoes it's instant death. There is no option to escape and you do not start with any torpedoes
5. No fallback melee weapon. Out of ammo? You flat out can't attack
6. Exploding enemies that visually imply their blast radius with a circular blast effect... that's smaller than the actual damage radius. You'll shoot one of these guys, see a blue circle radiate outwards, think "whew that was close. I just got out of range-- Hey, wait, what?", and take damage anyway
I've never forgotten about it, but my current playthrough of a deathless, pacifist run has scarred me. I haven't touched the game in years.
Foud this game about a year ago during the summer sale, glad someones talking about it
Another banger by Pigeonal! You’ll have thousands of subscribers in no time. :) Regards from Finland🇫🇮🎉
This game is so fun. So underrated. Cant wait for Wild Bastards.
Imagine figthing another player in the ship
I played wild bastards demo, pretty neat and i do see more focus on the characters as also we vaguely have super bad guy to take down.
Great content and great visual presentation, respect!
Great video on one of the most unique immersive sim-ish roguelike.
I die try making it towards the end, yet I got nowhere but die again for no reason but it was fun playing through a game that has a lot of cool ideas in it.
I agree with this analysis. The core gameplay was good, I thought it had more potential than it realised, to me, it felt rather two-dimensional, both literally and figuratively. Thanks for the heads-up about Wild Bastards. I'll go have a look at that when it comes out.
Played wild bastards by now, and as far as I can tell, it did a lot of things better than void bastards. For one, while ironman still isn't the default, it broke up the campaign into shorter "checkpoint" like sections, making the next major unlock never feeling too far away while making death not too punishing. Secondly, the planets are randomised. Not sure if the arenas are, but the resource strategy is, which is a plus for replayability. However, the game does loose its teeth a bit the more outlaws you unlock as it is quite possible to tonic brute force someone onto the last planet while loosing on every single one once you get past 8 - that is a whole backup team for the largest planet size.
I really enjoyed Void Bastards, but there's no real reason to go back after completing it. Until I just heard about iron man mode!
It was really fun game and I really enjoyed the comic book art style mixed with 2D sprites in a 3D environment, but it also suffered from lack luster content to which the only thing they added was a weapon dlc pack that should of been added to the game as a free update. something that would have been a nice incentive would be having to unlock character traits by simply play and or completing certain challenges, a lot like how you unlock items in the binding of Isaac, because that would encourage players to play more and have something to work towards. I'm praying that their next game won't suffer from the same fate as VB did. Also, as of me posting this void bastards are is $30 for whatever reason.
It's not just the lack of a good finale. There's also a bit too little in the way of variation in playstyles, traits, equipment, enemies, ships etc for there to be compelling reasons to replay it. A game like for example Binding of Isaac has hundreds of different weapon combinations making every run more unique.
And there's not really much in the way of goals or motivation to win the game more than once (except iron man mode I guess), compared to many other roguelikes that unlock more stuff after the first ending.
Gotta say this video did get me a little interested in trying an iron man run though!
And I gotta check out Wild bastards - thanks for the info about that one :)
I'm really looking forward to the sequel! It looks like a ton of fun and I dig the wild west shootout theme.
I love void bastards, but I feel like once you complete the campaign there's nothing to bring me back.
Good video, answered my question and didn't waste my time. Subbed!
c'mon man don't down talk yourself in the description*, this is actually really good!
Holy SHIT. This channel is underrated
I actually ran into a similar problem when playing void bastards, the art style and whimsy drew me in but I found the substance lacking. I agree with your points and I am excited to see the future
I never really forgot it. I played through it, and exhausted all content in it. After ducking under that bulkhead in that networking-computer room for the 800th time every room just started to feel samey to me. IF there was more variation in the individual rooms I think i would have gotten more out of it.
I remember this game, mainly because of my photographic memory.
keep it up my man i am super excited for the next vid whatever it is
Great video, love your editing style & your voice
Glad someone remembers this. Even if I was one of the ones that fell off pretty quick.
I played and finished Void Bastard.
Best Roguelike game out there! I thought it was gonna be popular, but seems it was forgotten.
Loved Void Bastards, but as soon as I beat it, I had no desire to play anymore. But I am excited for Wild Bastards, the sequel.
Looking forward to Wild Bastards. I really hope they fix the issues that Void Bastards had in that game
took less than a minute to sub. see ya around and definitely more of this, that intro went hard.
Never even heard of it.
Ive kept enjoying this banger now and then. Real fun stuff
Seriously excellent analysis of a game I enjoyed but also bounced off eventually
Dude Ive been looking for this game for awhile. Completely forgot its name. Cheers!
I really like the core gameplay of Void Bastards but you are 100% correct on how underwhelming the end is. Also I hate Screws/Trusty Screws. Having an enemy that is nearly impossible to deal with to the point that the game actually tells you to just avoid them feels like a cardinal sin in a roguelike. Roguelikes are supposed to be very challenging but the core of what makes the genre is overcoming that challenge. Having an enemy that you're legit not even supposed to fight that is purposefully over tweaked to basically force this seems backwards and counterproductive to the genre.
Been playing it almost every day for 1 year it's nice
Great video man,i hope i can see more of you
I got it, then forgot to play it, I guess this is my reminder.
I love this game, so cool to see someone recognise it :))
OK, this was one of the best reviews I've ever seen from someone with so few subscribers. Please keep at it!
Otherwise, on topic, I think there's another element here. Roguelikes typically keep their play sessions short, so the player doesn't have time to get heavily invested in any particular run. A winning run might take an hour or two. But at the point a single playthrough could take 5-10 hours and require multiple sessions, you're starting to move into different territory, the hybrid space inhabited by oddballs like Road 96 and Way Of The Samurai which blend rogue-ish elements with a more "choose your own adventure" storytelling format. With games like those, replays are about exploring the story branches and roleplaying possibilities, not just continuing to endlessly grind for loot and upgrades.
Seems like that could have been another way Void Bastards could have helped itself stand out, and stay compelling over time.
The weapon restriction challenge runs are where the game really shines: Firearms Only, Indirect Only, Devices Only, Unarmed, and Only Essential.
For each one of those there are enemies and hazards that you become unable to deal with and you really have to get creative.
If the challenge runs were more apparent to casual players, I think there would be more people coming back for seconds and thirds.
I really liked the game and was excited to see where it went, how it changed with updates only to learn it released 1 DLC 4 months after release and then stopped updating more or less, felt really weird. There's a lot of problems with the game, negative traits are too easy to remove and replace making them irrelevant after 2 levels, no replay ability which is weird for a roguelike, and more. Game feels like it has tons of potential that was never properly tapped into
It doesn't help that it ends on a bad joke that effectively undermines all the efforts the player went through. So not only is there no mechanical climax, though some of the final area citizens can be quite a challenge, but you also have no narrative climax or relief either, which is a nice one-two punch to the player's enjoyment.
The worst part is, they weren't dumb about this. You mention it, but Void Bastards comes with a lot more than just iron man mode. There are half a dozen different conditional modifiers to the game, my favorite being no parts, but all citizens drop loot instead, which gives a good reason to engage with the combat.
So as designers they knew to give the player something to come back to, and did so with aplomb, but they failed to realize that the ending of each run is going to deflate whatever good will the unlocked modes(which are unlocked via a point gain system at the end of runs) give.
To spin around for a moment, I'm hoping for something akin to Ziggurat's systems, which not only have a GOOD climax(not great, but good), but also spread the unlocks around a bit, so it's not a linear unlock cycle that doesn't always work unless you REALLY want to push yourself.
I absolutely love this game and it makes me sad noone really plays it 😢
I started replaying it not long ago, I feel it doesn’t have much replayability but it’s quite fun. When it takes so long to unlock and upgrade everything it makes me not want to start a new run, just one is meaty enough I feel