REVIEW | Voidling Bound

When you think about evolving a creature, what’s the first game that comes to mind? For most people, the answer will likely be Pokemón; others may think about games inspired by it as well. But in my mind, the first game that comes to mind is Spore, a game in which you evolve a species from its cellular form to galactic explorers.

Voidling Bound reminded me of evolving my Spore in their creature stage, when they were still developing their overall appearance and physical capabilities. Since I loved playing Spore, I was very excited to see this game being announced, so let’s get into what makes Voidling Bound similar to Spore, but also what makes it stand out on its own.

Things I liked!

• Evolution | The biggest selling point of Voidling Bound is its evolution system. There are a total of nine voidling species, and each species has thirty-three variations, so there are a lot of options when evolving and making a creature be what you want it to be. There are two main paths to pick from when evolving, each with its own element. Creatures can also be born mutated with a different element, meaning you won’t be able to evolve them, but they will have a different element from these two options. Creatures can even come mutated to get more of a certain resource, or even a better chance at getting golden eggs, the catch being that they don’t have an element, meaning they aren’t going to be as effective in combat.
  Later on, you will unlock the splicing station, where you can splice your voidling’s DNA, changing how they look, their abilities, changing their evolution, and even using elements and abilities from different species. If you do choose to splice your voidling’s DNA, you won’t be able to breed them, so think carefully before doing so. You don’t have as much control over how a voidling looks as you do in Spore, because there isn’t a detailed creature editor like in that game, but it still has a very nice system nonetheless.
  
  
• Farming | There are a few different resources in Voidling Bound, used for many different things, such as upgrades, evolutions, creature splicing, and eggs. Voidlings can be trained at training stations that you can unlock later on, and they can also breed, resulting in a better voidling coming out of an egg. Your spaceship companions give you the option to buy some resources with others, give you upgrade options, and also give you missions, and completing them nets you more resources.
  
  
• Beautiful and immersive | Voidling Bound‘s visuals are very colourful and beautiful to look at. The environments are very interesting, with three different planets ranging from frozen landscapes, rocky places, jungles and even abandoned human bases, and they all feel interesting to explore. Your spaceship is beautiful, interesting and feels like a home/safe place, and your companions also have their personality, despite not having a proper voice.

• Shooting and slicing | The gameplay in Voidling Bound is heavily combat-focused. You’ll be controlling your voidlings to shoot and slice enemies while cleansing the corruption from the current level. There are levels where you explore for eggs, golden or silver eggs that yield better voidlings, collect elemental strands for evolutions, fight varied enemies and also a boss at the end; but there are also levels where you only have to survive a few waves of enemies and fight a boss at the end, with no exploration involved. The gameplay loop is quite simple: you go on a mission for resources, and evolve and upgrade your creatures when you get back. It works and is very fun to do, but I do hope it gets more varied in a potential sequel. After you’re done with the main missions, you unlock what is essentially a roguelike mode, where you go on void strikes that get progressively harder, with better rewards. You can press on and risk all your obtained resources or go out when things start getting dicey; it’s up to you.
  
  
• Playstyles | Voidlings play significantly differently from each other, and different evolutions make them play differently as well. They can be very close range; be very good at shooting from far away; be melee-only, except for their ultimate ability, which, for most of the time, is ranged, or be focused on area attacks. There are many possibilities, and it all makes the game unique and a fun experience.
  
  
• Enemies | There are a total of four enemy “species”: robots, legion parasites, ancient stone robots and crystallines. All of these come in different formats, such as melee, explosive, shooting, and flying varieties, as well as tiny and big enemies. Every level also has a boss at the end, which can be repeated from another mission, mainly if you’re playing a side mission, but they help to bring more variety and bring some more challenge and fun to the game.
  
  
• Space sounds | The soundtrack in Voidling Bound is very reminiscent of other sci-fi media. It really helps bringing a sense of discovery and exploration to the game, as well as helping you feel like you’re in this universe. There are no voices, so all emotions are dependent on the music and sound effects, and they are more than enough.

Mixed & disliked!

• A simplified story | Voidling Bound’s story starts pretty promising, as you are the last hope of humanity. Humans have explored the galaxy quite a bit and have ended up discovering parasites called the legion. These parasites were close to wiping humanity off the map, but biologists ended up discovering Voidlings, creatures capable of defeating the legion and exterminating the virus. After some more research, they were able to make people connect with these creatures, thus bringing some hope for humanity’s future. The story doesn’t really progress more than that; it’s a backdrop to the fun gameplay, and even the ending lacks much of a conclusion, as it has a sort of cliffhanger, where you’re told you have to wait three years for more researchers to arrive and help your crew. It really feels like they did this because they’re planning on making a sequel, which I wasn’t exactly happy with, even though I’d want to play a sequel.

• How long did I play the review before publishing? 13h
• How long to beat the story? 9h – 11h
• How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 17/35
• How long to get all achievements? | 20h+
• You’ll love this game if you like these | Spore, Skylanders

CONCLUSION

Score: 85/100

Colombo

Hi there, I’m Colombo, I live in Brazil and I’ve been gaming since I was around 5 years old. Xbox became my main platform on the Xbox 360 era, before that I had played a bit on PC, Polystation (basically a skinned SNES), PlayStation 1 and 2. I really enjoy to experience immersive worlds, but I also enjoy playing silly games to have a laugh or just have fun.