![]() ![]() It’s satisfying to use an immobilizing stun gun to freeze groups of enemies in place before launching a package of small grenades that bounce and ricochet off the walls of a narrow walkway to deal devastating damage. You’ll quite quickly find a rhythm in how you progress through enemy territory as you get a handle on the gameplay loops, and we found ourselves sticking to more or less the same plan time and time again – get aboard a ship, head straight for its helm to download a map replete with locations of enemies and loot, get a fix on the nearest oxygen room (you’ll need to monitor your air levels as well as health constantly here) and then make our way around corridors as cautiously as possible There are hundreds of weapons at your disposalīut the variety between them and the tools you have allows for this experimentation. It’s a clever way of throwing lots of variables into the mix and, alongside ships that often malfunction in a variety of different ways, helps to keep things fresh and fun as you blast your way across the Sargasso in your little life pod. There are positive traits too, with better hit-rates, easier sneaking and beefed-up brawn that provides you with extra health amongst the random positive perks you may be assigned upon awakening from your cryo-snooze. Sometimes your avatar will have an incessant cough that alerts nearby enemies to your presence as you sneak around, you may have butterfingers that cause you to randomly drop your precious junk, be colour-blind – rendering levels monochromatic – or even be a well-known felon, ensuring that a level’s hackable auto-turrets are always hostile towards you. ![]() ![]() Here is inherently repetitive then, but Void Bastards manages to keep things interesting by endowing each prisoner you inhabit with all-manner of random afflictions that impact your ability to successfully manoeuvre through the game’s deadly space gauntlet. As you explore spaceships, scrounging around for supplies to push yourself that little bit further The cycle of gameplay Scrap and spare parts gathered on your sorties are used at your workbench aboard the Ark in order to unlock new-fangled weapons – you start out with a run-of-the-mill pistol but will soon be firing off toxic spikes and flinging Bushwhackers and Clusterflacks at your foes – as well as beefing up your armour and adding a variety of boons and skills which make the whole thing just a little bit easier to survive. You’ll die repeatedly as you attempt to move further and further through the game – with each death permanent for that particular prisoner – then restart afresh, a task made easier by a handful of persistent elements that see you grow stronger with each unsuccessful run. The core gameplay loops here will be familiar to any roguelike fan Townsmen – A Kingdom Rebuilt Making these desperate runs in search of components requires you to keep your supplies of food and fuel topped up as well as grabbing spare parts with which to upgrade your weapons and armour in order to successfully take on the various creatures you’ll come face to face with as you navigate the corridors of derelict hospital craft, tax boats, psych ships and frigates. In Void Bastards players assume the role of an endless procession of dangerous prisoners aboard the monolithic Void ArkĪn enormous space jail whose inhabitants are now being dethawed one by one from their cryogenic slumber by the ship’s onboard A.I – B.A.C.S – in order to venture into the infamous Sargasso Nebula, ransacking enemy-infested vessels in search of vital components required to get the malfunctioning Ark up and running again. Don’t worry though, as any crafting progress you’ve made is retained from one to another. When one dies, another steps forward to carry on the fight. Void Bastards features a 12-15 hour campaign that you can complete with an endless supply of prisoners, each with their own unique traits. All the while you must keep scavenging for the food, fuel, and other resources that keep you alive. ![]() Flee from void whales and pirates, and politely avoid the hungry hermits. Navigate your tiny escape pod through the vast nebula. Use your hard won supplies to improvise tools and weapons, from the distracting robo-kitty to the horribly unstable clusterflak. Or will you fight your way into the security module to disable the ship’s defenses? Choose carefully when to fight, when to run and when just to be a bastard. ![]()
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