‘Voidborn’: A Promising Rogue-Like For Those Who Love To Slaughter Demons
James Winspear
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If there was a holy trinity for indie genre darlings, there’s a pretty good bet that it’d consist of boomer shooters, rogue-likes, and Soulsborne games. So perhaps it was only a matter of time until someone took the logical step and combined them into a single entity. Enter Voidborn, a game that does just this, delivering an experience chock full of guns, gothic gaols, and gittin’ gud.
As befits any Soulslike or throwback shooter, you’re not exactly overloaded with story details as you enter the game. A few title cards set the stage. The Divine Lord—whatever that is—has been overthrown by its own creations. In a last act of vengeance, it created the Voidborn, a mute, purple humanoid to whom death is but a minor inconvenience and whose job it is to generally Rip and Tear. No prizes for guessing who you’ll be controlling in this setup. With that, you awaken in a weird cave, make your way through a quick tutorial, and start shooting down faceless demons with swords shoved through their chests. Rock on.
“Voidborn started out as a hobby project in the middle of Covid when I was studying computer science,” explains solo developer Xekvera. “With time, the game grew bigger than I had first envisioned, and I realized there might be a market for it. So I started sharing videos and screenshots on Twitter, and people had a very strong reaction to it. But to be certain that this was a project worth committing to, I decided to put together a short demo. It got a very positive reaction and generated thousands of Steam Wishlists within the first couple of weeks. With that, I had the confidence to take a break from my studies and work on Voidborn mostly full time.”
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Run and gun is the name of the game in Voidborn, and you’ll be doing a fair bit of both as you charge through its dimly lit dungeons. You’ll also be dying a lot, at least if my playthrough was anything to go by. But hey, this is a Souslike after all. In this regard Voidborn veers away from outright boomer shooter power fantasy and much more heavily towards the skill-based end of the spectrum. Its biggest inspiration is Ultrakill (“a surprise to no-one who’s played it,” admits Xekvera), although it also takes inspiration from Doom Eternal, Titanfall, and Hades.
Surviving Voidborn is a matter of mastering all the tools at your disposal. The Voidborn is a nimble bugger, and besides being able to move at roughly the land speed record comes with a whole host of athletic abilities. You get a dash with a whopping three charges, a gravity push that lets you bounce into the air or repel projectiles, and a short-range teleport not dissimilar to the blink power from Dishonored. You also get the ability to ground slide and sprint for long distances across walls and vertical surfaces, showing off the game’s Titanfall influences.
For offensive abilities, there’s a throwable fireball and a current lineup of three possible firearms; a revolver, an SMG, and a shotgun, all three of which have their own playstyles. The revolver excels at precision shooting and landing headshots, the SMG can spit out bullets fast but is tempered by an overheat mechanic, and the shotgun offers powerful blasts without the need for accuracy. You also have an Ultimate ability that lets you temporarily duel-wield your currently equipped firearm, for those moments that you need to feel like an ultimate badass.
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Where Voidborn’s roguelike elements come into play is its approach to upgrades. Similar to Hades, clearing an area of enemies grants you certain rewards, such as improved health, an upgrade to your skills or guns, or currency to purchase perks at fountains found throughout the game. Upgrades also have a rarity value, with some of the better ones granting new alt-fires to your weapons, such as a charged shot to the revolver or a flame burst to the SMG.
Many of these upgrades stack (for example, higher rates of fire or damage output), but any upgrade you acquire only lasts for a given run. Die, and you’re back to square one. The game almost feels like a dungeon crawler at times, especially in the beginning area, which consists of a set of rooms that get mixed around each playthrough. It’s only when you get to the second area that things open up a bit.
“The biggest hurdle was definitely the level design,” says Xekvera. “The level design in the first area of the game is pretty basic, as it’s just a randomly selected array of small levels that the player moves through linearly. But when I started working on the second area, I wanted to try something different by making it just one big level. This came with a lot of challenges that I had never encountered before, and was a massive task.”
As the world unfolds, you’ll have the chance to appreciate the macabre scenery more, from a cavernous hellscape right out of a Beksiński portrait to a gigantic underground mausoleum city. It’s all suitably grimdark and reflects the creator’s love for the Souls series.
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“I think the biggest aspect about Dark Souls’ atmosphere is how contrasted it is,” says Xekvera. “The world of Dark Souls is very tough, but with elements of softness and beauty. The cloth on the player’s armor waving in the wind; the soft-spoken voices; the beautiful nature and architecture; it’s elements like these that really accentuate how oppressive the world of Dark Souls is. It’s these themes in the games that I really enjoy.”
Voidborn is currently in Early Access, with updates scheduled to come every few months. At present, the aim is to have a total of five main locations and “at least” five different weapons. While the game has promise, there’s still certainly a few kinks to iron out. During my playthrough, I found that the guns were in definite need of balancing. The shotgun was powerful to the point of being overpowered (especially if dual-wielded against bosses), and could often one-shot weaker enemies even at mid-range. The revolver struggled to justify its existence by comparison and felt like it needed a faster base rate of fire. I also just couldn’t get the hang of the SMG, which has such a low damage output per bullet and overheated so quickly I noticed a marked increase in mortality every time I tried to rely on it.
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Probably Voidborn’s largest problem is that first level, which I found failed to make a solid first impression and may leave players a bit underwhelmed. For example, one of the first enemies you encounter is an uninteresting glowing red orb that shoots slow-moving projectiles at you, while the first boss you encounter is just a bigger orb with a couple of bullet-hell attack patterns. More than that, the randomized dungeon rooms of the first level undersold the game’s more impressive visuals when things got more open-ended. It feels more like a level that was made during the proof-of-concept. It may be better as a separate challenge mode than the player’s first area. Still, being in Early Access, there remains time to address these issues.
If the combination of a chunky, lo-poly indie aesthetic, Hades, Ultrakill, and a Soulslike appeal to you, Voidborn may be the game to keep your glowing red eyes fixed on. Voidborn has a full release planned for the latter half of 2024, and you can find it or its free demo over on Steam.
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