Most of the other reviews are all praising the game's incredibly fine tuned near perfected gameplay that caters to both casual and very competitive players perfectly which is all 100% true and the devs are more than deserving of all the praise for accomplishing that, but I wanted to talk a little about something that others aren't entirely mentioning.

It's incredibly rare to come across something that truly resonates with what it's presenting, I've never seen someone who truly "gets" megastructures like level designers behind VHOLUME have. You could see fragments of their incredible level design from their previous game STRAFTAT but the map sizes were limited by it being an arena shooter, the sense of scale the devs are able to convey is much more clear in their first game BABBDI, but VHOLUME is where they truly showed just how much they are capable of. The sense of vastness they've accomplished in the levels is something I've very rarely seen done right, it gave me the same feeling I got from reading Tsutomu Nihei's works for the first time. The sheer unimaginable scale of the infra you're presented with to run around in is something that I really couldn't do justice properly putting it into words, but it's something that needs to be experienced to understand even a little bit. Every level is a masterfully made fragment that's part of a colossal world that very few can imagine, an unimaginably lonely civilization with a few bits and pieces left behind if you can find them.

Beyond that the thing I appreciate the most about VHOLUME is the soundtrack, you'd think the obvious music choice for a game like this is high energy fast paced drum & bass/breakbeats like what the devs did for STRAFTAT, but they instead chose ambient tracks which is in huge part why the incredible level design hit me much harder than anything else I've ever played before. As someone who listens to ambient music nearly all the damn time this is probably the most unexpected surprise I've ever seen out of a game like this and I've already got many new favorite tracks out of it. I'm sure many people after the first or second playthrough will end up muting the music for this game to play their own tracks to really "lock in" when chasing the leaderboards which I find very unfortunate since I'm presuming every track in the game is tailor made for each level it accompanies. Alongside the ambient sound design in each level it all adds up to a sound presentation that is so incredibly rare to find in games that it'll always immediately stand out to someone like me. The last game I can recall that matched this kind of sound experience was Playdead's INSIDE, something special like this can only come from people who truly understand the medium they're trying to convey, and the devs and album artists for VHOLUME absolutely nailed it.

If you like ambient music, please give the devs and 1000 Eyes extra support by buying the soundtrack, it's so very rare to see ambient tracks like these make it to most games.

This game easily goes into my small list of games that I'll never forget for the rest of my life for what they've shown me, I might be too washed to be able to 100% the achievements for this game but I'm really grateful to have experienced it.

If by any chance a dev sees this review, please add a walk button so I can experience some parts of the amazing level design without zooming around like crazy lol.

Basically Blame! but Killy is urgently looking for a bathroom.

If podracing were a footrace, it'd be this. Great atmosphere, lovely times hanging out in multiplayer. Fun time attacks. Lots of unlockables and secrets. Tons of levels. High speed, high skill ceiling, or just wondering around the liminal spaces at your own pace.