Roguelikes and roguelites are an increasingly popular genre of games. Traditionally bound to the confines of indie development, Roguelites saw immense success with titles such as Risk of Rain 2 and Hades, with the genre even seeing some AAA representation thanks to Returnal, Elden Ring: Nightreign, and some (now deleted) content within Destiny 2. It is, however, a genre that is particularly difficult to stand out in given how many games of its ilk are out there, and yet it’s this need to differentiate and experiment with mechanics and ideas where VOID/BREAKER comes into the fray. It still has some ways to go, but I cannot help but enjoy this game so much, as it combines so many wild ideas with some more contemporary systems that we just don’t see much of anymore in modern gaming.
The elevator pitch for VOID/BREAKER feels like something that would come out of a much larger development team than the solo development effort that bolsters this impressive shooter. It features the accelerated movement styling of something like Titanfall, the destructible environments of Battlefield and the fast, responsive shooting of Call of Duty. That sounds like a lot to attempt to develop, but it has been nailed here. The fast movement is exhilarating, the shooting feels tight, and destruction physics are incredibly fun to engage with and are also an integral part of the game’s gameplay loop.
Almost as if it were lending systems from modern Soulslikes, enemies can have their stance broken, which puts them into an incredibly vulnerable state. How to do that, you ask? Well, the best way is to drop buildings on your enemies. No, I am not making this up; you blow up and destroy the buildings in the environments to break the stance of your opponents. Killing enemies who are in a broken state will also make them drop health and ammo pickups upon defeat. Alternatively, you can just spam your grenade ability off cooldown to put enemies in this vulnerable state, but why would you ever want to deny yourself the satisfaction of collapsing buildings and baiting your enemies into the falling debris? Additionally, you can pick up items like explosives using a gravity tether to then hurl them at your enemies, or the buildings if you want more destruction when your grenade isn’t quite ready yet.
After you beat the first boss that the game has to offer, and subsequently leave the first biome, the game expands your movement capabilities with the grappling hook. While not something that you need to use regularly in your playstyle, the grappling hook is an excellent tool for swinging around and increasing your character’s velocity. Seriously, this game is well on its way to being as fast and snappy as Titanfall, and that is high praise as Titanfall 2 is one of my favourite shooters around (EA, I will never forgive you for murdering the Titanfall IP). Even though I’ve played enough of the game to have everything unlocked and/or upgraded, the movement alone is enough to keep me coming back.
As is the case with every other roguelite, not all your progression is wiped upon defeat. There are three weapons for you to unlock in the current early access build, with more to be added in future updates. A personal favourite of mine was the shotgun, which, provided the correct modifiers had dropped for me to use, gave me the ultimate power fantasy. In fact, I had a shotgun build that was so profoundly stupid, I ended up killing one of the bosses so fast that the boss spent more time in phase transitions than in a proper damageable state.
There are also three biomes, and by extension, three bosses, so the amount of content currently available is quite finite, but because of how roguelites work, that allows you to work towards all your unlocks and upgrades. This includes cosmetic unlocks and higher difficulties. Fear not, however, as when you manage to beat all the content on offer at this time, you unlock the game’s endless mode so you can take on ever-increasing challenges and see how far your build can take you.
Everything that I have mentioned are things that are always guaranteed or constant in VOID/BREAKER. But what makes roguelites so special is that a huge amount of the game is not guaranteed, and this is where the game’s modifiers come into play. Most roguelikes and roguelites feel like their modifiers can be pretty tame. This is something that I actually was a little disappointed in Elden Ring: Nightreign for – it never felt like its modifiers did anything more than give small power boosts. Sure, they can come together to escalate into potent builds, but there was never that one item that would immediately make you feel like a god. VOID/BREAKER wholly leans into the concept of a power fantasy with some truly insane, and unhinged modifiers. The very first modifier like this I encountered was in the public playtest back in April, where I found a weapon mod that would increase my damage relative to my in-game sensitivity. Little did I know that this was the tip of the iceberg, as my time with the early access build has left me finding modifiers that work off your system clock, motion blur intensity, FoV setting, resolution, and more.
A personal favourite of mine was one where if I clicked the shoot button, my gun would rapidly dump all the ammo in the magazine. My gun was the shotgun, and so you can imagine how incredibly powerful this already was. On top of that, I had an ability that, when activated, eliminated ammo consumption for the duration of the ability. This meant that once I started to shoot my shotgun, it would not stop until the ability ended, and this allowed me to output putrid amounts of damage.
The other cool thing about how modifiers work in this game is how you slot them into your weapon to activate them. Each weapon has a certain allotment of slots, and making things fit efficiently is part of the puzzle that is VOID/BREAKER. On top of this, you get modifiers that enable more slots, and some that will increase the potency of other slots. The latter can also come at the cost of other slots being disabled, so you can see how you will constantly be going into your weapon’s customisation to find the modifiers that work best for your build. There are also some mods that work better in certain scenarios, and not so well in others. The best example of this I can think of is the mod that makes your weapon fire rain from above, which is excellent for bosses but can be somewhat of a liability in your normal combat encounters.
It’s this boldness in its modifiers that made me fall in love with VOID/BREAKER. I genuinely have no idea where the limit is for this game’s modifiers, and I am so eager to see where this game goes in the future.
One thing that I am sure we are all used to when it comes to early access games is them running like crap. It’s no secret that early access builds are far from polished, but I was surprised by how well VOID/BREAKER runs. Not only can it usually maintain high framerates, but its optimisation is so tight that the game’s fluidity is similar to that of the DOOM games. I never felt any microstuttering, and the game was buttery smooth. There was the odd occasion where the game would hitch, and if you managed to spam enough destruction and particle effects, your framerate would dip momentarily, but it was still incredibly stable and smooth.
VOID/BREAKER still has quite a ways to go before it hits its 1.0 release. Given that it is a solo development effort, I am unsure how long it will be in early access for. However, what it has in early access is so fun, unique, and experimental that it’s hard to not enjoy what is currently available. I am totally on board with what VOID/BREAKER is trying to achieve and am excited to see what the future holds.
PC Early Access code provided by publisher
