You play a prisoner in the depths of
space – or, more accurately, a series
of prisoners. When you die, an AI
backpack tears itself from your body,
flies back to the mothership, fills out
a P45 and rehydrates the next packet
of desiccated remains to bring a new
character to life. Lee references the
comics of 2000AD as an inspiration,
and Void Bastards definitely shares
the same anarchic humour and
unhinged visual style.Ship shape
Void Bastards is hoping to be more
than just a pretty face, though. An
open-ended FPS rewarding player
experimentation, it follows in the
footsteps of Chey’s previous titles – or
at least, the ones that end in ‘Shock’.
Aboard the derelict ships you
explore are plenty of interactive
systems: turrets you can hack to
shoot enemies, doors that can be
locked to trap threats too tough to
fight head-on, exposed electric wiring
and generators that can switch the
ship’s power on or off. Your arsenal
includes a gun that switches enemies
to allies, one that can suck up an
entire monster and deposit them
wherever you point it and a robotic
‘kitty’ that can act as a distraction. If
you’ve played these kinds of games
before, your brain is probably already
itching with the possibilities of
combining these elements.
Blue Manchu has built a second
layer to the design, inspired by XCOM,
to create what Lee calls a “strategy
shooter”. You chart a route through a
nebulae, deciding which ships to visit
by weighing up the threats and loot
they hold – parts to build new gear, as
well as fuel and food to keep you alive
as you drift through space.
The idea is that each decision,
whether it’s with a gun or a ship’s
wheel in your hands, is informed by
the other half of the game. As the O2
meter ticks down, you have to decide:
do you run to the escape pod and
risk starvation, or press on, searching
every locker in the hopes of finding a
nutritious sarnie before air runs out?
These aren’t the kinds of decisions
you usually have to make while playing
Halo, and if Void Bastards can keep
these moments coming throughout, it
should offer a shooter experience as
distinctive as its visuals. QThe first thing you’ll notice about
Void Bastards is how it looks. Every
enemy, weapon and object in its world
is picked out in a heavy black line,
filled in with blocks of bright colour.
The screen is broken into panels,
each with a white border around them.
Every shot fired and approaching
footstep is accompanied with a
‘KBOOM’ or ‘SQUELCH’ sound effect
that you see as much as hear.
In other words, Void Bastards looks
like an interactive comic book. Lead
designer Jon Chey, whose game
credits include the first BioShock
and System Shock 2, tasked art
director Ben Lee with making a game
that would stand out, even from a
distance. To make that possible, Lee
turned to his own interests.
“I’ve always really loved comics,” he
says. “I thought, I’d love to do a game
where the entire presentation is a
comic book, and when we go into first-
person you just sort of zoom in and
now you’re walking inside the comic.
That was my guiding principle.”
In motion, Void Bastards is slick
and vibrant, and it looks quite
unlike anything else out there. The
game is set in an enticingly weird
sci-fi universe: you’ll fight clusters
of screaming heads and floating
amorphous blobs of flesh topped off
with jaunty fedoras.Void Bastards’ enemies aren’t 3D models, they’re 2D sprites, drawn from eight different directions
Void Bastards
Staring off into space has
never been so rewarding
Alex Spencer
PUBLISHER BLUE MANCHU DEVELOPER HUMBLE BUNDLE
ETA 2019SKULL
AND VOID
“Don’t worry too much
about dying,” says
Ben Lee. “There’s
always plenty more
prisoners, and plenty
more packets.” When
you get back into the
action with your next
rehydrated prisoner,
they’ll have all the
weapons and
equipment you
have unlocked so far
- minus the loot from
the excursion that
killed you – and their
own set of traits,
ranging from
dead-eye aim to a
nasty cough.
“It’s an open-ended first-
person shooter rewarding
player experimentation”
030 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
PREVIEW