Full Void, a story platforming puzzle sport from London indie studio OutOfTheBit Ltd, wears its love of cinematic platformer classics on its sleeve. Bringing alongside core gameplay concepts from early entries within the style, it mixes in some trendy influences and introduces a couple of new concepts of its personal.
You play as a hoody-up teen on the run, lugging a backpack with a pc in it as you trek by means of desolate cityscapes in knee-patched denims. You might be hunted by evil robotic monsters, monitoring you down with their menacing stop-light eyes and scuttling about on spidery legs. As atmospheric as it’s, fairly why that is taking place takes some time to change into clear. Nonetheless, the specter of your pursuers feels actual and lends significance to the companionship of a small robotic helper you encounter later within the sport. Flashback cutscenes counsel this robotic was developed by your mom earlier than issues went unhealthy, bringing a satisfying aspect of vengeance to the story.
The primary gameplay affect is clearly 1991’s One other World from Delphine Software program. Full Void’s very first scene is a transparent and direct homage that ’90s avid gamers will love – a detailed duplicate of One other World’s opening moments, when Lester stumbles onto the scene and should escape a pursuing black beast. Identical to that older sport, Full Void’s characters transfer on a grid, permitting detailed, lifelike animations to play out between every step, on the expense of responsiveness of controls. This offers a way of rhythm and construction to the gameplay that fits each the continuous jeopardy of some segments and the logical pondering wanted to navigate others. The sport additionally borrows the trial-and-error gameplay of studying cross totally different scenes by failing at them first, then repeating till you may pull off the required manoeuvres. Fortunately, checkpoint spacing is extra trendy, which is one issue that retains the playtime down to 2 or three hours, however makes it way more enjoyable.
One other World’s influences proceed in different methods: sections navigating tight crawl areas, incidental cutaways to point out close-up actions, and the help of a sympathetic turncoat who can match the enemy in methods you may’t. Nonetheless, it additionally turns into paying homage to Inside as its story progresses into unusual laboratories and temporary stealth segments. In the meantime, Full Void’s greatest distinguishing gameplay function is available in its hacking sections. Plugging your pc into sure terminals all through the sport permits you to management components of the setting or your robotic pal. Coming into a sequence of instructions and hitting play to see issues transfer is a whole lot of enjoyable, and makes nice use of the sport’s inherent grid construction by overlaying a inexperienced matrix to navigate by.
With such a good run time, Full Void’s concepts don’t have time to put on skinny, however neither have they got probability to develop a lot depth. As a contemporary sport, it’s way more player-friendly than One other World, its essential inspiration, and appears and sounds improbable. It additionally brings recent concepts to the desk, reasonably than merely retreading the outdated for the sake of nostalgia. Nonetheless, it lacks a compelling narrative arc, which might have made it really feel actually cinematic.
