When my girlfriend sees me playing games, her most common comment is “You play weird games.” That’s just the way it goes for an indie aficionado whose love loves only the Might and Magic oeuvre. But in regards to The Void, she took it a little further, saying “that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen you play.”

And she’s right. Seen only in snippets, the dark, desolate world created by Ice Pick Lodge for The Void is very weird. I play around with my naked, de-sexed avatar, make naked, hyper-sexualized women undulate, and get yelled at by nightmarish human machines — all while running around and coloring things.

But those glances don’t give a complete picture of what’s going on. Clarity only comes after a serious length of time with the game. The Void is one of the most wonderfully confusing games I’ve played in a long time, and the confusion is deliberate. You’re dropped into an alien world with no real guides, just two sides — the brothers and the sisters — that can’t agree on your role in their small universe. There are elements in each faction that want you, and elements that don’t. And as the two sides argue amongst themselves, you’re left not knowing who or what to believe.

Gameplay

Color is everything in the void. It’s your weapon, your armor, your health and your only way of interacting with anything in the void. It’s rare, but it’s life, and you have the rare ability to give it away.

Raw color comes in few forms in the void. You first discover it growing wild in the various subworlds or by luring small creatures into your traps. Eventually you can grow it by donating some to trees in a sister’s garden. Then you can find it buried in the walls of a mine. And finally, you can find it in the larger predators that roam the void. As you gather it, the color whispers to you and sits in your stores, waiting to course through your body.

In order to stay alive when you travel between chambers in the void, you must fill at least one of your hearts with some color. There are seven colors, each with a special property. Fill a heart with crimson and your attacks become more powerful. Fill another with azure and you’re faster. Though not all the colors’ properties are apparent at first, they’re all very useful. As you move through the void, color trickles out of your heart and into your palette. If your hearts run out, you die.

The color in your palette can no longer keep you alive, but you need it to interact with the world. You do this by painting glyphs with the mouse. The first glyph you get is the donor glyph, which lets you give color away, and it’s the most important glyph in the game. It allows you to infuse trees with color, then come back over the next few days to reap your rewards. It also lets you give color to the sisters, unlocking their chambers and freeing travel in about the void. But for such an important part of the game, the glyph recognition is pretty finicky. Often I’d try to fill a tree with the donor glyph, only to have it fail and waste a significant amount of color. Then, cruelly, the game chides you for not using the donor glyph.

Most of the other glyphs deal with combat. Though you can fight predators just by coating them with color, that tactic is woefully inefficient. Bringing up the paint cursor slows time, so you have some breathing room while your fighting whatever it is that’s trying to kill you, but you still have to act fast.

The glyphs usually summon something. There’s a missile attack that summons sticks to track whatever a target you paint with color. There’s an attack that wraps smaller predators in a web that explodes when the little guy is eaten by something larger. And my favorite, Ritual, needs to be drawn three times. Each glyph summons a small hedge, and when the final one is drawn, anything caught in the triangle formed by the three points takes a hit. Drawing glyphs is more forgiving. If you fail to draw a glyph to the game’s specifications, you don’t lose color; all you’ve lost is the time it took to draw the glyph.

Most of what you have the opportunity to fight isn’t very challenging. Most predators act like wild animals; if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. So if you stay far enough back, you can plan out an attack at your leisure. But there are two opponents that put up more of a fight. That would be the parasites and the brothers.

Parasites are huge beasts that dominate a few of the sisters’ chambers. They’re so powerful that even the brothers are afraid of them, though I’m not sure why. You don’t really need quick reactions or perfect timing to handle the parasites. They’re only challenging because they can withstand a massive amount of color. Unfortunately, two of the three parasites I encountered could be tackled in exactly the same way with relative ease. I expected more variety from something that terrified the brothers.

That’s because the brothers are actually challenging. They occasionally tell you to do something, and if you fail to do what one of them asks, he’ll get pretty mad and chase after you. Each one behaves differently on the battlefield, and the only consistent strategy is to fill yourself with crimson, azure and emerald, and think on your feet.

Style

Most games let you feel powerful. The Void does not. You’ll spend the vast majority of the game wandering the void, low on color, hoping you can survive until the next cycle. It’s a dark and desolate place, and the only color in it is what you provide. But when you do provide it, it looks wonderful. It’s almost enough to give you hope — except that the color always fades away. The trees lose their blossoms after a few days and everything is bleak again.

The predators are a mix of strange creatures, from hoping, screaming leathery light-bulbs to giant parasites that consume the smaller predators. And the brothers, the terrifying brothers built seemingly of human misery. They aren’t pretty to look at, but most of them speak in a way that contrasts with their form.

The sound design is sparse, but effective. The color whispers to you, comforting you as you pick it up and chastising you whenever you use it. It can be a very chilling effect.

Story

The less I say about the story, the better. I’m not usually worried about revealing spoilers in games, but the way The Void unravels as you play it is sublime, and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. I can say that the world is so alien, and so much of the story is tied to how the world works that even revealing some of the games mechanics could ruin the story.

For instance, in most games, killing the stuff that’s trying to kill you is the best strategy. In The Void, killing small predators means they’ll stop hounding you, and killing larger ones can even net you some color. But dispatching the predators brings more, even larger predators further down the line. Why? Well to tell you, I’d ruin that part of the story. And I’d hate to do that.

The concept is easy enough to explain. You play a soul who becomes stuck in the void. Under the guidance of one of the sisters, you find your first heart and fill it with a little bit of color.

What I can say about the story is that both the brothers and the sisters try to convince you that they’re in the right, even if it’s not always clear that either side actually wants you. The brothers bicker and argue amongst themselves, half saying you’re destined to become one of them, and the other half arguing for your execution. And the sisters, unable to move from their chambers, give you conflicting ideas of what you’re in the void to do. Some of what you’re told is true, some if it isn’t, and it’s hard to tell the difference. Though it’s mostly clear which side is good, and which side isn’t, you’ll probably end up doing quests for both sides, because each makes persuasive arguments for doing what they ask you to do.

All that’s left to say is the void was a fascinating place to inhabit.

Everything Else

The Void is, frankly, a massive undertaking. It’s very deep and it’s very easy to get in over your head. If you aren’t paying attention, you can waste a lot of color early on, and you can get to a place where it’s impossible to progress. If that happens to you, don’t worry. I started over more than once. The developers admit that it’s hard, and provide a few cheats on the forums. A fan also made a patch that makes more color available. I avoided them, but probably would have succumb if I weren’t reviewing the game.

[DIYgamer was provided with a copy of the game for review purposes. This in no way affected the outcome of the review.]