HomeFeaturesVoices of the Void
Press many buttons to operate a radio telescope array in this eerie indie game’s demoI hope the truth is out there, and not in here with me
I hope the truth is out there, and not in here with me
Voices Of The Void sends you to work at a radio telescope array in Switzerland, a fairy ring of dishes rising above the trees. Your job is to find, record, and analyse intergalactic objects, then sell the data, plus keep the whole place running. It’s nice and slow yet very involved.
Scanning the skies for alien life in Voices of the VoidI could have made a snazzy high-speed highlights video, but the pleasure is in pace and procedureWatch on YouTube
Scanning the skies for alien life in Voices of the Void
As a known fan offiddling with objects, I very much enjoy the many processes of pressing physical buttons on computers, typing commands into terminals, throwing switches, dragging around drives, refuelling from cannisters, and so on. It feelsHalf-Life 2-ish, especially because I think it’s currently using some HL sounds. After the tutorial, the game drops all support and is happy to let you bumble around and figure everything out, which I like. It’s pleasurable to master this job, to come to perform the process as matter of habit, to know how to find and fix problems, and to learn the layout of the valley I now live in.
Can’t believe I must buy my own coffee maker to boost my productivity for The Man
It is also a mild daily life simulator, with day and night cycles plus hunger and tiredness to manage. And each day, your boss will e-mail tasks with opportunities to earn extra funds. You’re in charge of upgrading all the individual systems too, see, using the money you earn. And while you get a daily drone delivery with a new drive and a bag of crisps, you’ll also want to buy extra supplies and handy luxuries. It’s a big job for one person. Alone. In the woods.
Voices Of The Void is a suspenseful game. The setup instantly made me think of Five Nights At Freddy’s and woodland Slender Man jumpscare ‘em ups, but it’s not like that (though I did nope real hard upon finding mannequins inside my base). It’s a slow, creeping unease of focusing on an otherworldly task, alone, at night, hoping you won’t see something out the corner of your eye. Every time I watch dishes rotate out the window, I try to avoid seeing between the trees, just in case.
This tension can be joyful too. Every peach-coloured dawn is a relief. And when a shower of rain coincided with a meteor shower, I rose from my bed and ran into the night to gaze up and spin in wonder. But I’m increasingly encountering moments of… not quite horror, not yet, but certainly dread. I fear worse is to come as I progress through the story mode’s days.
I hate that my command centre has a radar console pinging away in a corner. And I hate that the console has a button to reset an alarm. What’s the scanner for, game? Why might an alarm go off? It’s that very good thing in games: revealing a system to you before you need it, creating anticipation/curiosity/dread about when and how it might come into play. Maybe it never will. I hope it never will.
I like when games are unconventional enough that I never feel I have a firm handle on what they are. Without comforting knowledge of genre conventions, it could be anything, so I tie myself in anxious knots imagining everything. It’s the same feeling I had playing excellent infrastructure inspection gameInfra. And now my brain is running wild imagining what Voices Of The Void could do. I would flip my very lid if the daily drone delivery ever happened to, you know, just casually give me a gun for no reason, don’t worry about it, just a gun in with my groceries. I have no reason to believe that it has guns or will ever turn violent. But what if it did drop me a gun. Oh no.
You can download the latest pay-what-you-want (with no minimum) demo buildfrom Itch.io. The developer, MrDrNose is helping fund it througha Patreon.
Ooh and only as I finish writing this post do I learn ofan older game with a similar premise, Signal Simulator. Looks shinier and more high-tech, that, and a lot more complicated. I quite like that Voices feels like a low-fi Half-Life 2. But I’ll have to give that one a peek too.
