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 fashionable influences and introduces a number 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 desolate cityscapes in knee-patched denims. You’re 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 grow to be 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 recommend this robotic was developed by your mom earlier than issues went dangerous, 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 players will love – a detailed reproduction 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 provides 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 go completely different scenes by failing at them first, then repeating till you may pull off the required manoeuvres. Fortunately, checkpoint spacing is extra fashionable, which is one issue that retains the playtime down to 2 or three hours, however makes it far more enjoyable.
One other World’s influences proceed in different methods: sections navigating tight crawl areas, incidental cutaways to indicate close-up actions, and the help of a sympathetic turncoat who can match the enemy in methods you may’t. Nevertheless, it additionally turns into paying homage to Inside as its story progresses into unusual laboratories and transient stealth segments. In the meantime, Full Void’s largest distinguishing gameplay function is available in its hacking sections. Plugging your pc into sure terminals all through the sport means that you can management components of the surroundings or your robotic pal. Coming into a sequence of instructions and hitting play to see issues transfer is a number 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 likelihood to develop a lot depth. As a contemporary sport, it’s much more player-friendly than One other World, its essential inspiration, and appears and sounds implausible. It additionally brings recent concepts to the desk, fairly than merely retreading the outdated for the sake of nostalgia. Nevertheless, it lacks a compelling narrative arc, which might have made it really feel really cinematic.