After playing around with the free demo of Voidling Bound on Steam, the third-person action creature collector has quickly become one of my most anticipated games of Summer.
Voidling Bound is set in a sci-fi universe where humanity is battling a powerful alien force called Lesion. The Lesion corrupts planets and spawns nasty monsters that are impervious to our weapons. Our last resort is a new kind of recently discovered alien creature: Voidlings. By evolving and binding them, we can fight back against the Lesion, and cleanse the planets.
In the demo, I awaken aboard a spaceship as a face-less Space Wrangler, who’s adept at bonding and linking with Voidlings. After meeting my crew of scientists and zoologists, I’m introduced to my starter creature, the chicken-like Kwipeck, and sent on my first mission.
My first Voidling
The gameplay is divided into two main sections. Aboard the spaceship I control my Space Wrangler, where I hatch eggs, talk to crew, and modify my Voidlings. When I select a mission, I hop into my special Neural Link chair to sync up with my chosen companion, switching to their little point of view, and drop down onto a hostile planet in need of cleansing.
The Kwipeck is a nimble, long-range attacker who fires a minigun like burst from its beak. I can quickly dodge attacks, and eventually unlock a secondary explosive bomb attack. Targeting enemies and dodging attacks feels fast and responsive, much closer to a classic third-person shooter than something like Skylanders (which I was half expecting).
Each mission ends in a big boss battle
The alien planets are fairly small, especially the tutorial mission, and the second level was a simple (but fun!) wave-based arena. But the third level was much longer. I enjoyed exploring and finding hidden areas with eggs, mutagens, and research points, before culminating in a big boss fight.
Between missions I can hatch new Voidlings and modify them. The demo only includes two playable Voidlings, the Kwipeck and the Glick, a dog-like lizard.
And yes, you can totally pet the Voidlings!
Who’s a good boy?
By using mutagens, I unlock additional elemental types for my Voidlings. But it actually goes deeper than that, as the evolutionary skill tree continues to advance into more specialized attacks and abilities. I was able to turn my Kwipeck into a poison-laced sniper, one-shotting many enemies if my aim was true.
The Glick plays a lot differently. I went down the cryo path, and it was like playing a short-range shotgunner, with a cone-blast, and fun leap attack to jump into the action.
Each Voidling can be further enhanced using research points, spent in a large passive-buff skill tree like an action-RPG. While each Voidling has its own tree of enhancements, the trees are thankfully shared between different evolutions of the same type.
Each Voidling has over 30 different evolutions
The Lesion isn’t the only threat out there. Different enemies are also weak against different elemental types, encouraging me to spread my creatures out among different elements, just like a Pokémon game. As an example, the demo featured an arena match against robotic enemies weak against cryo, allowing my Arctic Glick to shine.
At one point I discovered a Golden Egg, and upon hatching, unlocked a special Mutated Kwipeck. This lovely specimen was pre-evolved, and had increased stats due to its unique body parts, as well as a third jump ability. I also found Strong variants of other Glicks and Kwipecks, which began with +1 Strength.
A golden egg hatched a rare, mutated Kwipek
If I’m reading the Voidpedia correctly, it looks like there are only nine different Voidlings in the full game, which is disappointing. However, each Voidling has over 30 different evolutionary builds. And though I wasn’t able to try it out in the demo, players can eventually splice in different body parts to further modify their stats and abilities – and even breed them together!
In other words, it makes a lot of sense to evolve and level up multiple Glicks, Kwipecks, and the other Voidlings.
I love the vibe of the Voidlings as loyal and cute little companions. While in the ship, my equipped companion follows me around, and automatically leaps into various chambers and pods to evolve them, or when it’s time to link up. The ship can also hold a number of other Voidlings, which I can see playing in their little sanctuary.
Extra Voidlings can be released, but I am slightly worried how the game deals with hatching lots of extra Voidlings, and where those extra body parts will come from…
Battling robotic drone enemies in a special demo mission
As a fan of creature collectors and action games, I quickly fell in love with Voidling Bound. The action and gameplay is relatively straightforward in all the right ways, focusing on the immediacy of the snappy battles, and the depth of satisfying builds and creature growth. I can’t wait to dive into the full game in June.
Voidling Bound will release on Steam and the Epic Games Store on June 9. Console release dates are TBA.
