Developer: Hatchery Games
Publisher: Hatchery Games
Available on: PC (Steam, Epic)
Played on: Steam PC
Most creature collectors follow the same basic formula: collect ’em all, level ’em up, and use ’em to battle in tactical, turn-based battles. Voidling Bound, however, is a third-person shooter that happens to use cool alien creatures in place of exotic weapons, loadouts, and playstyles — and it almost works.
Read on for our Voidling Bound review!
Space Bound
There’s not much story in Voidling Bound. We play as a (literal) faceless space wrangler on a ship with a handful of NPC crewmates. Our job is to battle back against the Lesion, a nebulous force of alien monsters with zero personality. To do so, we’ll need to collect and hatch Voidling eggs, then link up with them, essentially transforming into the creatures themselves as they head down to different planets to complete missions.
The lacking story is a major weakness. I don’t exactly expect Mass Effect, but something other than generically battling the forces of purple darkness would be nice.
The lack of voice acting is also a bummer, as our helpful crew (and their very helpful upgrades) could inject some much needed personality into our ship.
The lack of voice acting is a bummer
Missions and planets are unlocked linearly as we complete missions and increase our rank by leveling up and evolving Voidlings.
Missions come in two varieties: Corruption Cleansing, and Survival.
Corruption Cleansing are the normal missions, which include traversing through an area, battling enemies, and eliminating purple globs of goo. These levels have a few hidden secrets to find that include upgrades and eggs, and the occasional platforming bit, but are otherwise pretty straightforward.
Survival is even more simplistic, with small arenas featuring waves of bad guys. Sometimes you have to defeat several waves, including a boss, while other times you have to survive for a certain amount of time. Boss battles are often epic and chaotic, though boss enemies also just seem to be larger, more souped up versions of regular enemies.
The enemy types are disappointing, especially compared to the way cooler Voidlings. The robots are blocky and boring, the Ancients are a bunch of blocky stones, and the Crystalline are, well, crystals.
Even the endgame, which is annoyingly open-ended, is a repeatable, randomized mission of increasing challenge and rewards. The final area has some cool music, at least.
Thankfully everything about the Voidlings themselves is fun and rewarding.
Environments look nice, even if they’re a bit barren
Gotta Splice ’em All
Unlike many creature collectors, Voidling Bound lets us actually become our Voidlings in third-person combat. Each Voidling plays remarkably different, and that’s before factoring in their many evolutions, modifications and upgrades.
The starter Voidling, the bird-like Kwipeck, is armed with a rapid ranged attack that resembles an SMG or assault rifle, and a secondary attack that is sort of a lobbed grenade. By collecting catalysts, I can evolved my Kwipeck along multiple branching paths, changing its element type and its attack patterns. For example, turning its primary attack into more of a long-range sniper.
I soon abandoned the Kwipeck after discovering the second voidling, the Glick, whom I dubbed Shotgun Doggo. The Glick is much more close-range, with a spread-shot and leap attack. I soon found a rare golden egg that included a pre-late stage, fully mutated Glick that knocked enemies into a floating bubble when leaping, and used crazy homing shotgun blasts to destroy them.
Later Voidlings get even crazier, including the melee only Ur-Sek, whose ultimate move actually changes attacks from slow and stunning into fast and ranged, and the jellyfish-like Nimiod who creates a network of pillars and zaps everyone around them.
The Ur-Sek looks like it just walked off the set of Starcraft
Each Voidling has two main evolutionary paths and element types, and each enemy faction is weak to two different elements, with later missions throwing more than one faction at me. Just like most creature collectors, it’s best to have a team that covers different elements, though I can still only field a single Voidling for each mission.
The game gradually introduces its detailed Voidling systems, including breeding for better stats, enhancing with passive upgrades, and splicing to achieve multiple mutations. At the end of each branch, Voidlings gain a helpful new power or buff, such as spawning healing auras, turning melee attacks into cones, or just adding a third jump. Unlocking all of them is expensive but helpful, as I can splice my favorite Voidling, giving them multiple mutations, as well as different coloration and appearances.
Voidlings have cool designs that get even cooler as they evolve
It’s not quite Spore, but it’s a great balance between customization and gameplay.
The balance is a bit questionable however. I absolutely dominated as certain Voidlings while struggling with others. Plasma types just seemed far stronger in general, including a Plasma Nimiod that just wrecked everything around me while staying almost permanently hovering.
Meanwhile the poor Ur-Sek and Gremlins-inspired Gwigoon have to put themselves in constant danger, and struggled to deal with long-range enemies.
My plasma nimiod was an absolute powerhouse
The Rating
Voidling Bound has not been rated by the ESRB. Combat is the entire game, with alien creatures battling other creatures in bloodless battle. See our Game Picker entry for details.
The Takeaway
Voidling Bound isn’t quite the Spore meets Skylanders I was hoping for. The actual third-person action gameplay is super solid (and runs great!), and the Voidlings are all cool and interesting designs, even if some are far more user-friendly than others.
But the complete lack of story, forgettable levels and missions, limited content (you’ll reach the endgame in less than 10 hours), and boring enemies makes it hard to stay invested, or give a compelling reason to perfect our favorite Voidlings.
Voidling Bound is available on Steam.
