Void Stranger

I came for the trailer vibes and instead found a deeply moving story interwoven with an absolutely deranged (complimentary) puzzle gameI am not normally one for puzzles, riddles, or logic puzzles of any kind, most especially not in my video games. As someone who struggles to think in anything except straight lines, I find that all too often I simply have no hope of hopping on whatever train of logic a puzzle’s designer took to get to a puzzle’s solution. As such, I came to Void Stranger based solely on the vibes of its launch trailer, which seemed about as tailor made to one-shot me as a bullet carved with the name **** rival. While I found the game’s puzzle design largely understandable outside of some occasional snags in the back half (and in the Hard mode), I likely would have eventually put the game down were it not for its incredible story presentation. Told through snippets of its central characters memories and the occasionally rendered pixel art cutscene, Void Stranger’s story of love and devotion is far more heartfelt and emotive than one might expect given the game’s monochrome Game Boy aesthetics and told with a level of subtlety and respect for the player’s intelligence that more games’ writers should strive to emulate

Place your faith and embrace de Void. Something is really special with System Erasure games. As two finnland devs they are trying to make something different and oh boy they really cooked with this game. Void stranger is a sokoban puzzle game. I never really played a lot of these types of games but i decided to try it out and it was the best decision of my life. This game has amazing gameplay mechanics, incredible (a bit cryptic) lore and the power to just **** you mind with some mind blowing gameplay twists (i won't spoil anything but there's something special about this game). If the sokoban gameplay is holding you back from purchasing the game, don't worry, the game really helps the player with the amazing game deseign of the levels. Plus, the puzzles are fun, some of them are a bit challenging but never super duper hard. The game appears to be a normal puzzle game at the start but the more you know the more enjoyable it gets because of the special features you'll discover. The game is honnestly flawless, one of the best games i ever played.

This game will put off most players with some of its gameplay and tricks, but I urge the reader to keep wandering the void. It is well worth it.

Pushing around rocks. Enemies with deterministic movement that only triggers when you move. Switches. Digging up blocks and moving them to other spots. Avoiding falling into the void. This is 99% of what you'll be doing in Void Stranger. Still reading? Okay. Look, for what it's worth, Void Stranger has some fantastic puzzles to scratch the itch of a riddle-loving brain. I sat there addicted to these puzzles. I don't know why. I have never played a Sokoban-style game before, other than some room in an old Zelda game, probably. It took Void Stranger for me to realize that when this kind of puzzle game is done right, I actually really enjoy it. Void Stranger is a great Sokoban game. Still reading, eh? Alright. Void Stranger is more than just a giant Zelda puzzle. There is interesting lore that encases the whole experience. BUT remember what I said earlier. 99% of what you'll be doing. Pushing rocks. Stuff like that. That's still true. But there is some sort of mystery to discover here. Yakkocmn said it best. This is an archaeological dig. For those of you who like to think, experiment, play with your environment, theorize, hypothesize, and just try things - this game might be for you. I don't want to spoil anything but the game definitely rewards you for progressing with many interesting things. It's not a typical game and I really commend it for that. I really really commend it for making me spend over 50 hours pushing around rocks and stuff. If you're a thinker like me who can't let go of unsolved riddles, you'll likely find something enjoyable about this game. It's cool. That said, the story as a whole was not compelling to me. I didn't fully get it, it didn't fully explain itself, and while it was interesting, it felt like it was lacking something. Very creative, but maybe lacks a unifying theme. But the puzzles are cool. No, really, they are pretty cool. Verdict: GOOD

they said it was like outer wilds, but at the end it wasn't. i just didn't like the gameplay loop and story, osts are really good though

Finally, a game that fixes the lack of representation of big saggy gazongas in the sokoban genre.

I quite enjoy the retro, OG Gameboy aesthetic, but this game is horrendously designed and deliberately wastes the player's time. I got to around the 100th floor or something, and the game locked me out of the story ending because I died a bunch of times on an earlier floor in a specific way, and then the game "invisibly" said, "Right you can continue but we're not going to tell you 40 floors from now, you have already screwed yourself." Any type of game design that deliberately lies to the player and wastes the player's time, can get in the bin. You can have your meta-narrative. You can have your discovery of new things on repeated playthroughs. That is fine, but do NOT waste my time and then pretend that you think that is a clever subversion. Unacceptable.