for those wondering what this game IS

[Treetop69]

In basic gameplay terms it breaks down into a surreal version of farmville. You are a spirit floating in the void that gathers 'color' which is basicly a flower, and add it to a pool.

you put the color into your 'heart' and it gets refined into useable color. i call it ammo. you travel from node to node in the void, while travveling you expend that ammo.

at each node there is no rush, and for the most part you draw a little picture with the color on some dead trees. that tree will begin growing that color. now the farmville starts.

you need to run node to node gathering color, and giving color to trees. the more you harvest the more the "brothers" notice you, then they come to steal your color gardens. you go throw color at them in order to fight.

if you dont use color as ammo, fuel, or seed, then you spend it on "sisters" which are the nude sluts you see in the pictures, this helps them "ascend"

There is not really too much of a plot or main goal, its more a surreal experience that can be brutally difficult to survive and thrive in. If you DO do well then you get a little nude lapdance.

i bought the game and am mildly regretting it, but its kinda cool. i just wish i saw this post before i bought it, i HATE when people cant describe gameplay to me or when they tell me to go in blind.

[tonythetiger122]

Thanks for this review. I will wait for a discount sale.

[Treetop69]

np. so many games now a days people just say "its cool but too hard to describe. best to go in blind" which rather irritates me.

the game is a slow paced game for sure, but i want to be clear that the farmville aspect of it is brutally difficult.

if you farm too much of one color and refine it in one of your 20 hearts(refinerys) then the excess that can not be added into your refined pool of fuel/ammo gets spilled into the void.

the more color you spill into the void the more monsters spawn at your gardens, whcih means more color used to fight monsters and less helping the sisters ascend.

Ascension of the Sisters appears to be the driving goal behind the game.


the management of your fuel/ammo as well as the management of your various gardens, the locations of the gardens and sisters, the brothers, all of it comes together to make a VERY difficult surreal world to try and survive in.

its not twitch gamer difficult, its management difficult.

[Sonic63587]

I played this for about 30 minutes and you're telling me all that build up is to play farmville with colors? ♥♥♥♥...

[Garfflesnark]

I'd probably say Farmville is a little too loose a comparison, but it really depends on the number of games you've been exposed to.

A game I'd probably say it resembles more, in terms of multi-tasking and layers of playability would be "Rune Factory" for the DS - except, while that game is hard, The Void sits at a level of brutal difficulty.

In Rune Factory (which is a fantasy-esque-world version of "Harvest Moon"), you actually have to manage a farm while going on quests, defeating enemies and trying to accumulate gifts to get the attention of a number of girls in your surrounding neighborhood (so you can marry them).

While The Void doesn't have much in the way of quests (though they DO exist - the Mining task, the Pangolin task, the Worm task, the Pelican/Triton task, defeating the Brothers one by one and protecting the Sisters when the Brothers go on a "witch hunt" - for example - are all quests), it certainly has plenty in the way of defeating enemies (killing Monsters and Brothers -- and you can't quite get around not killing Brothers unless you're masocistic) while accumulating "gifts" for a number of women while you manage a "farm".

So, yeah. A better example would be Rune Factory.

Of course, you're also talking about a game that also has game mechanics that resemble those from "Okami" (where you "paint" abilities/attacks in symbols/glyphs), and "Shadow of the Colossus" (where your main enemies - the Brothers - are a set number of themed, named and very large enemies with specific strategies to defeat each) that is also very "Zelda"-esque (you gather "hearts" to increase your power) and retains enough of a psychological and surreal-horror aspect to stand tall beside artistic marvels like "Silent Hill".

There is a heavy "Pathologic" flavor (and level of difficulty) to it, as well -- but, what can you expect? Ice Pick Lodge made that game, too.

[v.0]

"Like farmville"? "Not much of a main plot or goal"?
Utter nonsense.
And just to add, riddled with misinformation. My guess is that OP couldn't get farther than the first three Sisters, then squandered his resources on what he calls "lapdances" just to get his kicks and inevitably died. Then ragequit. Then came here to bash on the game out of self-pity.

I much stronger agree with Khyle.

The Void has elements of several games, farmville not even remotely one of them.
The Void resembles Sacrifice, Okami, and to a degree Legacy of Kain or even Amnesia.

The Void is philosophical, poetic and artistic. The plot is rather intricate with three sides vying for the main protagonist. Though they all have different methods. The Brothers use Fear. The Sisters entice you with Seduction. And not to spoil the story too much - the Third one with Dreams. It's up to You to piece everything together, as this decision will shape the outcome of your playthrough.

The Void is an RPG without the usual RPG formula. Your main goal is to unlock all the Hearts, which are sort of like skills and levels. More hearts = higher resource pool + higher resource cap + more skills. But Hearts are useless without Colour.

The Void has only one resource, called Colour. Or should I say Colours - seven in total. Depending on how much Colour there is in The Void, you get different effects throughout the world. If there's more Crimson in The Void, all damage is multiplied. If there is more Gold in The Void, the Sisters will be happier with your offerings, but the Brothers will get jealous and try to tear their Hearts out. Every action has its consequence on the world in this game. And you can also fill Yourself with Colour. The more Azure you're filled with, the faster you become. The more Emerald you contain, the stronger your defense. And so on.

The Void is merciless and Famine reigns supreme. It's not for everyone, and will prove difficult for most. I have clocked 30 hours of gameplay and I'm already 5 cycles from finishing the game. It isn't endless if you don't want it to be. Choose your side carefully, spend your Colour wisely, and remember - there is no Death in The Void.

[Garfflesnark]

"My guess is that OP couldn't get farther than the first three Sisters, then squandered his resources on what he calls "lapdances" just to get his kicks and inevitably died. Then ragequit."

Heh! Yeah. That's probably a pretty good assumption as to what happened. The degree in which it goes from "sort of hard" to "really effing difficult", at that point in the game, seems to send people through a loop.

If you lack patience, you just won't get through this game. You will also fail dramatically at least once. If not twice. Don't do well with failure? This might not be a good game for you.

"The Void resembles Sacrifice, Okami, and to a degree Legacy of Kain or even Amnesia."

Actually, YES. It DOES resemble "Sacrifice" quite a bit, doesn't it? That one hadn't actually even crossed my mind until you mentioned it. Good one.

If you're 5 cycles from finishing the game, things are going to start living up more and more to The Void's original name: Tension. Especially if this is your first playthrough, and especially-especially so if you're struggling to reach Turgor. Triple-especially if you still have Brothers to kill or you've lost Gardens.

Just make sure that a) you have your sister's hearts filled (if you're going that route) b) you have all your Nerva filled to the brim and c) you have all your Hearts filled to the brim. Having JUST your hearts filled isn't enough. You don't have to have your Lympha filled to the brim, though it's an impressive achivement if you can. The game doesn't 100% explain this in-the-clear (like most everything else), and you don't want to end up "losing" the game/getting the bad ending because you've misunderstood something.

You have until the END of the 35th cycle. Then it's Game Over. Make every moment count! :)

[Treetop69]

OP here

>>"My guess is that OP couldn't get farther than the first three Sisters, then squandered his resources on what he calls "lapdances" just to get his kicks and inevitably died. Then ragequit."

Im on cycle 9 with plenty of color, but i hate buying games or asking about a weird one and being told "its best to go in blind" or "its too weird to describe"

There is a very concise description of the game to be given, i gave it. Even if it sounds bad.


>>>The game doesn't 100% explain this in-the-clear (like most everything else), and you don't want to end up "losing" the game/getting the bad ending because you've misunderstood something.

The fact that you yourself say that the game does not explain things and that you put " " on losing implies what i said about lack of a point being accurate. From the moment you enter the game you are not told;
Why you are in the void.
What the void is.
Are you trying to escape the void?
Who are the sisters?
Why are they here?
What is the goal?

In zelda, the goal is to get the trophy from each dungeon solving puzzles, assemble them, and fight gannone. In CoD its to kill people. The only "thing" to do is kill brothers and feed sisters. Feeding sisters gives you the lapdance, killing brothers kills the brother.

There is no grand overarching story to the void. There is no overarching point to it and it uses arcane words like lympha and nerva, and when it DOES explain the little bit it does its by that one sister with a super slow drawl as she sits in a seethrough dress with her knees up to her chest.



>>>You have until the END of the 35th cycle. Then it's Game Over. Make every moment
count! :)

What kind of bad ending or good ending could there be. You farm color to feed sisters and kill brothers by painting glyphs on the screen. I am never tense during this game, more bored/confused and often just looking at the surreal art.

[Treetop69]

Since everyone claims there is a deep intricate story, please, spoil it for me. Im begging you, because so far all i see is brothers roaming around and sisters wanting to ♥♥♥♥ me, neither with a goal or purpose in mind.

[v.0]

Khyle, sent you a friend request. Let me know if it got through. :)

Tree - GFGI. You have humiliated yourself enough already.

Like Khyle said, this game is not for everybody. We answered your questions before you managed to post them. If you aren't just trolling, then kindly re-read our posts with those questions in mind.

[Treetop69]

GFGI? never heard that anronym.

And what exactly am i suposed to be humlaited about? my completly accurate description of a game?

you mad much? jesus ♥♥♥♥. lol.

[Garfflesnark]

Got and accepted your invite, who?. :) Thanks!

"Im on cycle 9 with plenty of color, but i hate buying games or asking about a weird one and being told "its best to go in blind" or "its too weird to describe"

That's because it IS hard to describe, without going into a lot of subtext and spoiling the experience of the game.

The Void is a game that thrives on the experience as-you-play. It doesn't focus so much on experiencing an end, but the experience you have while striving to achieve that end.
Cycle 9 is still way at the beginning. You're hardly through the start of the game. Color is barely talking to you at this point. The Brothers are hardly on your case, and you are nowhere near completing tasks. You're far away from any story explaination. That kind of starts happening around Cycle 30 -- way closer to the end of the game.

"The fact that you yourself say that the game does not explain things and that you put " " on losing implies what i said about lack of a point being accurate."

Part of the reason why it does not explain things 100% is because a) the game is translated from Russian ("Pathologic" (Ice Pick Lodge's first title) actually suffered so bad from translation problems that it's largely unplayable for many people, while the translation mish-mash makes the world seem even more surreal -- and more difficult) and b) the characters are always lying to you and leading you astray ON PURPOSE.

Each facet of the Void has their own agenda, with very slight exceptions.

I put quotations around "lost" because it needs quotations. If you played the game all the way to the end, you'd understand that ultimately "losing" was subjective. It's not that there isn't a point -- that's just it. There are MULTIPLE points. And multiple ways of looking at them.

(I mean, you can lose the game straight-out by losing all your color and flat-out DYING in the void. But that's flat-out dying.)

"Losing" the game is actually an ending, which makes the losing part subjective. Thus, quotation marks. It's an ending where you've both lost the game, and have achieved an end. You don't just die. You fail the game, and get the bad ending - albeit, the game is constructed so you can consider "failing" to be the "correct" ending. This is, of course, assuming the results potrayed by the bad ending is what you want.

Since you're not very patient, and won't let the events of the Void unfold and let the story be told on its own, I'll go ahead and answer all of your questions. Of course, it's nothing your BIG GAMING BRAIN couldn't figure out on its own, right?

**** SPOILERS FOR EVERYONE ELSE BEYOND THIS POINT ****

**** YOU FIND OUT MOST OF THIS INFORMATION -IN- THE GAME. IT'S REALLY EFFING OBVIOUS. SERIOUSLY. THEY TELL YOU MOST OF THIS BY CYCLE 30. GO PLAY THE REST OF IT IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED ****

**** LAST CHANCE****

**** OKAY HERE WE GO ****

One of the main things you have to keep in mind about this game is that, even though it carries through several major obvious themes, it is still 'open' enough and 'artistic' enough that individuals can take much more from it than what is obvious. Lots of games do this, but The Void does this especially well -- and especially so, as the themes in the game fit the idea of interpretation very well.

1) Why you are in the void?

a) You are narrowly escaping soul-death. You are an artist, a poet, a creator, who is experiencing creative soul-death. Your soul is plummeting into the depths of itself, because it is being swallowed by the gray, colorless throes of harsh reality, trauma and depression (there are also theories where the individual is on their death bed, or they're about to be born from a previous life, suicide attempt, coma -- stuff like that). Golden Eyes is a personification of the player's creative spark. It's become mute (in the original concept art, they made him "blind", too). And it's dying.

You're basically there to fight to regain control of your soul. Your humanity. Like Inception, you're planting the seed of an idea -- so that it can be 'born' and manifest in the real world.

2) What is the void?

b) The void is YOU. The Sleeper, is YOU. The player. It is a representation of the player's creative (and literal) mind. Note how the map looks like a series of neurons? That's not accidental. It's a literal interpretation of the player's creative thoughts, dreams, and nightmares. There are also references to "Limits", or "Levels" to the Void -- which brings to mind a reference you'll see many times in the game: "Divina Commedia".

(In fact, the entire game could be seen as an allegory for a trip through Purgatorio.)

3) Are you trying to escape the void?

c) That's your choice. You can escape if you want to. You can let a Sister ascend. You can become the ultimate Brother. It all depends on what you choose to do -- or if you fail. And yes, you can 'fail' the game -- and you can do that on purpose, if you choose to do so.

4) Who are the Sisters?

d) They're MUSES. That's the most simple, straight, to-the-point description I can give. They are the player's thoughts, feelings, dreams, ideas. The things that he literally feeds color into, to bring things out into the world. Of course, you know early on in the game that there were many, many more Sisters before. Many more Realms. Bountiful color. And the Brothers were not so apparent within the Void. As the player has grown, in the real world, and has faced real tragedies, ruts of creative loss, artist's block, etc -- his muses have been dying.

Note that the last Sister to be created was the Nameless Sister. They call her Sister Death. The implications of that, being the last Muse created by the Void, is very telling.

The BROTHERS -- on the other hand, as I know you're probably wondering this -- are NIGHTMARES. They are the manifestations of tragedy and the player's personal Hell. They've come into the Void because the more trauma and creative loss Golden Eyes has experienced, the more the Nightmare ascends into the Void -- the Brothers (Nightmares) torture the Sisters (the Muses), steal Color (which you use to feed your Muses to birth your ideas into reality) and are generally the degenerative destruction that dismantles the mind so much your inner self ends up there.

5) Why are they here?

e) They are there for you to nurture with Color so they can give Birth to a new "Life". You will get an idea as to what sort of "Life" the Sister gives birth to at the end of the game when you finally ascend one, in the form of a poem and a visual sweep of the overworld embellished with their favorite colors. How you envision that poem manifesting is up to you: Is it an alternate reality where it's literal? Is it a painting? Is it a book? Is it a representation of how the player feels coming out of their creative rut? They leave that open to interpretation.
When you choose a Sister, and feed her Color... you are basically nurturing your chosen creative Muse to ascend to reality -- you're nurturing a specific Idea. Each Sister is very different in personality, looks, speech, realm -- for this reason. They really needed to represent different aspects of the human condition -- and I think Ice Pick Lodge did that VERY well.

6) What is the goal?

f) The goal is to ultimately save your soul from the Nightmare/soul-death on its own, ascend a Sister to nurture your creative spark in place of your own independant ideas, or become one with the Nightmare and become the ultimate Brother. Like I said, you can do this on purpose -- you simply have to wait until time runs out. It's one of the legitimate endings. It also indicates that you've "Lost" yourself to the Nightmare, and have thus "lost" the game, but you can consider it the "True" ending if you want to.

(I warn about it, though, because it's a bummer if you suddenly get it and you haven't saved lately. The entire game is timed to the 36th cycle. If you haven't ascended anyone, including yourself, by the beginning of the 36th cycle, BAM. You get the Nightmare ending.)

While the endings are not the most spectacular endings you've seen (I have a feeling they were rushed -- albeit, the poetry is very lovely and I enjoyed getting every one of them), you can continue to interpret how these endings turn out in different ways. This was also purposeful.

You can personally take what ending you think is "True" and which is "False", and you can interpret what Sister you think was the "Right" Sister, or if ascending yourself was the "Right" ending and for what reasons. You take what you've experienced in the Void and you carry it over into real life, by thinking about your choices and how it reflects on you as an individual.

It's a bit existential, that way.

**** END SPOILERS ****

So.

Any more questions? ;)

[Treetop69]

Nope, just a very sincere thanks. I have a list of games from steam sales as long as my arm to play and had no intention of going further than the cycle i was on. The farmville aspect of the gameplay is too slow for my tastes.

Its a very poetic game and im not much of a poet - or even interested in it, really.

Thanks for the explination, could have done without the big gamer brain bit though, i originally made the thread to help others like me who heard "good game but go in blind" and then got something raddicaly different from anything ever made. So yeah.


thanks

[Garfflesnark]

I can completely understand why someone not poetically or artistically inclined would not be able to get 'into' the game. There are plenty of games different people can't get 'into' for various reasons.

Like I've said before: This seriously isn't a game for everyone. Seriously-seriously.

And it IS something radically different than anything ever made, because that's simply and exactly what it is -- something that, in its entirety, is dramatically different than what the average gamer has experienced.

When someone says something like "Good game, but go in blind.", it usually means that the game itself is undescribable. Not because it's a poor game -- but they just can't articulate how to describe it. Whether or not it's comprehended is best left to the experience and decision of the individual playing it.

Really, comparing it to -any- game, from Farmville to Rune Factory (or anything in between) in a direct manner (aka: "This is like a surreal version of Farmville.") is a disservice to those who may actually enjoy the cerebral portions of the game, but pass it over thinking that it's a rudamentary version of a casual timesink. I think that's why who? was put off by the comparison. Obviously, there's more to The Void than meets the eye.

All in all, it's perfectly fine if the game doesn't jive with you. There's no problem if you don't understand it. It's like a person who likes apples over oranges. It's just that when you enjoy apples, and try oranges, and then turn around and compare oranges to potatoes, people who might've liked the oranges to begin with won't try it, because they hear they taste like potatoes.

(No offense meant to anyone who likes apples, oranges or potatoes.)

[Grim0013]

I just want to make one primary statement here: Just because you aren't 'poetically minded' absolutely does not mean you can't enjoy this game. I am largely unable to comprehend written poetry,, however, I still found The Void to be an amazing experience. One of my top 3, I think, in 25+ years of gaming. It is...beautiful, different, ugly, deceptive, surreal, manipulative, and more. If you aren't sure, put it on your wishlist so you get notified when it's on sale, then buy it for a few dollars. Even if you think you're only 25% likely to enjoy it, it is still worth the risk because if you do enjoy it, it is beyond worth it.

[Messiah⭕⃤]

This game is litterally one of my favourite games ever as you can see from my DP. Its not so much a game but a story, you wander through a barren land called the void, where you need to grow colour to keep you self alive and feed you multiple heart that you gather. The sisters all want to use you to escape the void, the brothers all want to kill you (most). As you travel through the void you learn more and more about each sister and brother and begin tie the peices of the full story together. The game is about balancing and decision making, but like i said its not about the game its about the expierence.

This game is almost genreless its so creativly different, one of the most innovative games ive ever played. I think its worth the discount price and more. You will never ever find a game out there that could ever come close to a game such as this. After beating it i spent hours trying to find something that would feed the need of this game. It left me wanting more, anything in comparison, unfortunatly ive had no luck with that, truely amazing.