➤ Full Void, the review of a game halfway between Another World and Limbo 🕹

The Full Void review tells us that OutOfTheBit Ltd's adventure whispers in the ears of the nostalgic, presenting a more than discreet product.

Dystopia, science fiction, artificial intelligence. These are the main ingredients that make up Full Void, a two-dimensional pixel art adventure that extends between phases of platforms and puzzles that you must solve relying on your intellect and a certain spirit of observation.

the creature of OutOfTheBit Ltd It can also be defined as a pleasant collage of old video game glories, which, although it never surprises or astonishes, worthily accompanies the user in the three hours necessary to complete it.

To describe it briefly, without losing precision, we can compare it with Prince of Persia from 1989, the unforgettable Another World and Inside. The second son of Playdead published in 2016, upon closer inspection, represents in almost every way the most direct ancestor of OutOfTheBit Ltd's production. From the setting to the narrative style, through the gameplay and the pace of the adventure , everything refers to the Small Masterpiece of the Danish selection, similarities that will not fail to attract the attention of all fans of science fiction and titles of this type.

Unfortunately also for this reason, as we will see better in this article. Complete cancellation review, the game practically never manages to surprise, revealing itself to be an undeniably fun and well-developed adventure, but one that fails to leave a mark or manage to stand out against the fierce competition.

Dystopia and artificial intelligences gone crazy

Full Void, the review of a game halfway between Another World and Limbo — At first Full Void seems to have to do with the invasion of a particularly advanced alien species. Then the true causes of the apocalypse become clear.

As with the more recent Planet of Lana, to offer another term of comparison, Full Void begins without much ado, projecting the player into the heart of the action from the beginning. A pair of slightly animated pixel art screens is all that is given to the player to orient themselves in the scenario imagined by the software house's artists. in a dystopian future, in which humanity has been subjugated by an artificial intelligence, the teenage protagonist will first have to escape from the robotic patrols that are pursuing him, making his way through the vegetation and the darkest streets of the suburbs where the prologue of Full Void takes place. .

The silences broken by sudden sounds, the sound of footsteps that echo through the neighborhoods of a city that seems essentially deserted, the poorly defined contours of the figures that move on the screen, including the protagonist, are stylistic features that characterize Full Void and they give him This is certainly a derivative character, but not completely devoid of charm.

At first you are involved in the story, confused about what to do, eager to discover the protagonist's ultimate goal, as well as how it was possible to subjugate humanity so easily. There is no total destruction of the Terminator, nor a distant future of the Matrix. Everything seems apparently familiar, almost contemporary, if it were not for some clearly futuristic structures and constructs here and there, in addition to the aforementioned absence of any living soul that travels the same paths traveled by the young hero.

Full Void, in this sense, chooses the path of maximum coherence, making it even more difficult to understand the story given the total absence in the scenario of documents that broadly explain and illustrate events and happenings not directly told during the adventure itself. . There history, except for a handful of animated screens that interrupt the action from time to time, is completely environmental and it is up to the player to get an overall idea, straining their eyes and formulating hypotheses based on the numerous details that enrich each screen.

La Pixel Art, in this sense, is deliberately ill-defined, with faces, panoramas, and even sketchy animations. Even on an extremely sharp screen, the artistic choice is not at all jarring or unpleasant. With a deliberate nod to the aforementioned Prince of Persia and Another World, Full Void is appreciated for its aesthetic appearance, although it practically never manages to offer particularly suggestive or notable glimpses to the eye.

The Planet Earth designed by OutOfTheBit Ltd is certainly not unpleasant and, thanks to an impeccable technical sector, it can be explored pleasantly. However, thanks to a character design It is not exactly unforgettable, artistically speaking Full Void does not stand out much from other productions that show two-dimensional pixel art.

The almost total absence of one colonna sonora, from this point of view, does not help to excite and emotionally involve the user, although choosing to immerse the adventure in a sometimes anxiolytic silence will surely attract the sympathies of a swath of players.

The apocalypse of Full Void has already been seen, faced, overcome

With regards to gameAs we have already mentioned, Full Void is divided between platforming and puzzle phases. As in Inside, everything is closely linked to the practice of trial and error, although the extremes of the two Playdead works are never reached. In the game you die often and voluntarily. Between ravines, patrol robots, flames, deadly vapors and dozens of other obstacles, most of the time it is a matter of experimenting, before discovering and intuiting the best way to overcome the difficulty of the moment. Full Void, in this sense, is not incorrect. By sharpening your eyes and acting with caution, you can almost always anticipate problems, but in some cases the end of the game is inevitable, an event that, however, is never penalizing given the very high frequency of checkpoints, which reduce time. lost between points at almost zero attempt and the other.

Sometimes jumping from one platform to another can cause a sudden and disastrous collapse of the structure. It often happens that you are chased by a sentinel hiding beyond the edge of the screen. An almost invisible trap can be triggered if you don't watch your steps carefully. He level design It may be unpredictable and exhilarating in its own way, but for those who have already successfully passed the tough tests proposed by Limbo and Inside, the challenges proposed by Full Void will seem like nothing more than a friendly exit. Precisely taking into account the general level of difficulty the game slightly loses consistency.

Yes, because the adventure, which crosses the same path traced by the two Playdead masterpieces, does not challenge the player with the same audacity, nor is the level design so brilliant as to sometimes compose truly original puzzles, sometimes twisted scenarios. full of platforms between two. Jump to.

At its best, Full Void represents a difficult challenge only for those who do not have much experience with video games, while some game overs will cost too many for those who are comfortable with the pad in their hands more due to a too rigid control system than due to actual complexity. of some of the passages of it. Even when there is a small robotic helper, who can be given a sequence of commands using specific terminals present in the scenario, Full Void does not make the much-desired leap in the design of challenges and puzzles truly capable of worrying the user more. than necessary Gray matter.

Not bad, however, for those looking for alinear adventure and never too challenging. The game, of course, can still provide quite a bit of fun. Precisely because it is never frustrating or overly challenging, it flows quite well, offering a good rhythm, also due to the way in which the scenarios alternate. Getting bored, in essence, is impossible, although only three hours to reach the credits is still a very, perhaps too short period of time.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price 17.49 € Holygamerz.com 6.5 Readers (9) 7.0 your vote

Full Void is a game in the vein of Limbo and Inside, which however has little to do with direct sources of inspiration in purely qualitative terms. We don't want to be misunderstood. OutOfTheBit Ltd's proposal does not lack anything, nor does it specifically show the possibility of particular problems, beyond a sometimes too rigid control system. Simply put, from the plot to the gameplay to the art and level design, it's too derivative and unoriginal to make its mark. The three hours in the company of the unnamed protagonist of this science fiction adventure set in a dystopian future pass pleasantly between a finished game, a solved puzzle and a series of precise jumps from platform to platform. However, in a few months you will have a hard time remembering this game. Recommended, in short, but only if you are abstinent from the genre or are looking for something fun, but never too challenging, that is somehow reminiscent of the aforementioned Playdead titles.