The one thing I love about EGX Rezzed is that there are always a few really unique games around, whether it be their gameplay, visuals or something else that makes them stand out, there are always a few gems tucked away.
Void Bastards – for me, was one of those.
Ok, Void Bastards might not be a hidden gem seeing as we’ve witnessed it showcased on stage at XO18, but I feel like there should be a bit more buzz around the comic book styled strategy FPS from Blue Manchu.
Void Bastards sees you take charge and not just pointing your gun at people and pulling the trigger. Your task is to lead the rag-tag Void Bastards out of the Sargasso Nebula. You will make the decisions on where to go, what to do and who to fight. Then you must carry out that strategy in the face of strange and terrible enemies.
The most notable thing about Void Bastards is definitely in the way it looks, it looks like a comic book come to life, or an episode of the Simpsons, the animation is beautiful and fits the comedic narrative perfectly.
When you take on a mission of boarding a derelict ship you will have to plan accordingly by checking out the layout of the ship, understanding what hazards are on board and who you might come up against. You will then be able to equip a number of weird and wacky weapons to help you on your mission. You need to adapt as you play with things like power outages impacting your mission, meaning that maybe your objective becomes locked behind a door. During you voyages aboard ships you may need to think of some creative ways in which to progress and that’s something that really interests me, being able to approach missions in various and creative ways is always good fun!
I got to play for around 10-15 minutes and during that time I was able to take on a couple of missions. Navigating around the map works in a similar way to FTL, you are presented with a star map, and there will be various routes you can take to jump to a new location, along the way you’ll encounter derelict ships, or maybe just wreckage’s that can be quickly searched for valuable resources.
Once you decide to board, this is where the aforementioned planning comes in. For me the ships I boarded didn’t have an specific objectives, so I was able to freely explore them – with a time limit, and basically just gather resources to help me on my journey. Both the missions I did played out quite differently mainly due to the enemy types on board, but from other videos I’ve seen and from watching other players there are lots of variations you will encounter with enemies, weapons, gadgets and hazards all combining to create a plethora of different ways to play.
It was a really fun game and I’m very excited to play the full game when it releases later this year, hopefully we will get an announcement of a date sometime in the near future! Definitely one to keep on your radar.
-Will
