Void Bastards
Get bombarded by British jokes and annoying enemies in repeating corridors.
Ever since BioShock Infinite released and Irrational in its previous form went away, I’ve gladly played any games that offer a comparable experience. That is, a first-person shooter where you have more at your disposal than just cool guns. Void Bastards is described as a strategy shooter inspired by System Shock 2 and BioShock, and it features the talents of some former Irrational staff who previously made 2013’s Card Hunter.
You are a prisoner, travelling across the galaxy to fulfil the whims of an HR computer that might eventually grant you your freedom. You get across the map with an FTL-style interface, and while most locations are enemy spaceships that you can board, loot and escape, there are also stores, asteroid ranges and deadly hazards to be aware of. Mostly, though, your time is spent navigating ships in first-person, looking for specific items to progress, then escaping before you’re killed.
Your character has perks, both positive and negative, and if you die, you play as another criminal with different perks. Negative perks might be your character coughing every now and then, attracting enemy attention, or being more easily detected by security cameras and gun turrets. A positive perk might be better aim, or a higher chance of a critical shot. The ships are partly procedurally generated – the maps of the different vessels you’ll board stay the same, but walls, enemy locations, obstacles and more will change each time. This means you can roughly learn where you’re going on each ship, but that you can’t really be certain of what you’ll go up against.
While there is a stealth element to Void Bastards and you do have some
silent weapons, it’s mostly about shooting weird, British aliens in small corridors and rooms. The standard immersive sim elements are here: you can hack turrets to fight on your side, or shut down security from a terminal on the ship. You have a dart gun.
The crafting system in Void Bastards is excellent, and I say that as someone who usually loathes boring equivalent systems in other games. If you want to make something specific, a location tool in the game will tell you which ship on the map will grant you the parts to make it. Everything you craft is consistent between deaths, so the penalty for dying is usually just being further away from your main objective.
Here’s the problem, though – I only intermittently enjoyed Void Bastards’ actual combat. The tools are great, and often fun to use, but the enemy types are mostly a poor fit for what you have in your inventory. Some are deliberately overpowered and meant to be avoided.
THIEVES IN SPACE
It’ll take around 12-15 hours to finish a single run, and even after doing that, you can carry on unlocking stuff and taking on harder enemies. I’m considering another run, even though I spent so long sighing at enemy barks, or getting shot at by inexplicably placed turrets, or getting too close to exploding enemies without realising it. There’s just something very compelling about arriving on a new ship and finding that next thing you need that Void Bastards nails.