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I love it when a game comes out of nowhere and surprises me. Earlier this month, that is exactly what happened when I saw the trailer for VoidBreaker during Gamescom Opening Night Live. I downloaded the fast-paced sci-fi roguelike FPS shortly after seeing it, and not only is it good, but it might be one of the best shooters I’ve played all year. And it was made almost entirely by one guy, Daniel Stubbington.
VoidBreaker is an incredibly fast and sleek first-person shooter available now in early access on Steam and Game Pass PC. The game is set inside a large, highly advanced AI program that is using human test subjects to gather data on combat and warfare. This involves you endlessly fighting and dying over and over again through “runs” of the program’s randomly generated gauntlets filled with various robotic enemies and other odd cyber-opponents. Luckily, very early on, a previous human who was trying to escape the program contacts you to help take the AI down and get out alive. Sadly, your ally is just the digital remains of a very dead person who has a skeleton hiding in your cyberjail’s basement. But while he’s dead, his mind is still in the program and helps you hack the system, slowly unlocking permanent bonuses and new weapons to help you get further during each action-filled run.
If some of that sounds silly, it is! And that’s the point. VoidBreaker leans into the absurd and strange situation you find yourself in, with plentiful jokes delivered by a dry robot announcer during runs. Messages include the program explaining how living forever in pain is better than dying, and how you aren’t alone because the AI is always watching you. It strikes that perfect balance between silly and dark that Portal nailed so many years ago.
Another run, another run, another run….
The gameplay loop of VoidBreaker will feel pretty familiar if you’ve played any roguelike game in the last few years. Each run feels different, as enemy encounters and other sections of the digital gauntlets are randomly generated. As you progress through these runs, you find mods of various rarity levels that give you new abilities, make you stronger or faster, or even change how your gun works. And of course, as in most roguelikes, there’s a currency you earn that can only be used at shops that randomly appear on your path during that run. There’s also a currency that lets you unlock permanent upgrades in the aforementioned secret dead guy basement.
So yeah, nothing groundbreaking in Voidbreaker. Instead, the reason to play this new FPS is for the gameplay and combat. Movement in VoidBreaker is incredibly smooth, snappy, and satisfying. This is the kind of game where it’s just fun to run around and jump, even outside of a fight. And gunplay is equally fantastic, with the assault rifle you unlock fairly early into the game being a loud and hectic death machine that sprays enemies with bullets in a way that always makes me happy. Buildings and other structures you spot in the levels can also be destroyed à la Battlefield and crumble upon enemies, stunning or even killing them. Oh, and you can pick up most items using a Half-Life-like Gravity Gun mechanic and fling them back at baddies, too.
As you upgrade your character during runs, adding ice bullets, improving your Gravity-Gun-thingy, unlocking fire attacks, and collecting super-powerful grenade mods, the action in VoidBreaker can become extremely chaotic. At times, it became nearly too much for my eyes to keep track of as my rifle spat out electrically charged bullets covered in energy fields, buildings collapsed around me, and enemies filled the arena with various red projectiles that can do a lot of damage if you aren’t careful. It can be a lot, and I think for some it might be too much. But I enjoyed every moment of it, even if there were definitely times when I was just spamming my abilities and grenades toward a massive cloud of destruction and death and hoping for the best.
But the chaos is part of the fun, and death isn’t that big of a deal in VoidBreaker. After all, it just gave me another excuse to load back up in my weird, sparse cyber apartment/prison and quickly say hi to the skeleton in the basement before hopping back out for one more run. I’m excited to see how the game expands in early access. Now, I need to go and play more VoidBreaker. Just one more run. I’ll go to bed eventually. It’s only 2 a.m….
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Zack Zwiezen
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