- Tested on PC using a code provided by developers
- Test configuration: RTX 4090 + i9-9900K
- Sold at low price on Steam (less than 15€), the game ends in about 3 hours
Few today are the works capable of convoking in a wink the spirit of the games 2D cinematic platforms flagships of the 1990s, such asAnother World or the wonderful Heart of Darkness d Developed by the independent studio OutOfTheBit Ltd, Full Void is part of the aesthetic and spiritual line of the latter.
Enter the Void
Ful Void takes place in a distopic and hostile future controlled by a malicious artificial intelligence, whose humanity is under yoke. It is a young boy with a mission. Which one? You will have to progress in adventure and solve many puzzles to discover it. Since the game is completely devoid of dialogues, all the intrigue unveiling goes through staging.
Barely a new part launched that the beauty of artistic direction, entirely hand drawn, impresses. Prepared for pixel art The British's title of OutOfTheBit Ltd fills the sight of the land and elegantly decomposed motion animations.
We take pleasure in watching our hero, certainly young, but already a budding athlete, running, jumping, crawling or gripping pipes in height: each gesture represents an opportunity to admire the accuracy of the sprites. The environments are also dynamically illuminated which, combined with the threatening nature of the many paintings, helps to make the atmosphere heavy and disturbing.
Oriented die and retry, Full Void also offers environmental puzzles that, if they are far from insurmountable, will always require enough judgment to provide a sense of duty.
It should also be noted that unlike old school games, Full Void proposes checkpoints very frequent and close to danger zones, so that you never feel frustrated to start a scene again. Every death of our character also gives rise to a magnificent cinematic dedicated in close-up, to gently raise the pressure.
In fact, in the same way as‘Heart of Darkness' (the best cinematic platformer Of all times, it is said!), you will often be chased by deformed mechanical creatures and will have to demonstrate a common sense of observation to analyze the decor quickly enough to find an escape.
Very balanced, the game knows how to vary the pleasures, and its puzzles, platform sequences and other puzzles in collaboration with a robot chain without any time dead, over the two and a half hours that the journey lasts.
When we know that the studio OutOfTheBit Ltd was so far specialized in mobile games or arcade productions of lesser pretension, we can only bow to this more artistically ambitious creation and look forward to learning more about their future projects. If you, too, are sensitive to sharp and minimalist staging, and the beautiful 2D aesthetics give you tickles to the stomach, then you know what you have to do!
Needless to say, it's a real urge. Just quote Heart of Darkness to stir up emotions rooted in my oldest player memories. I'm surprised the game never got a remake. No doubt a dark question of intellectual property because it would undoubtedly have a great success with enthusiasts of platforms.
It was a wonder, ahead of its time and a typically calibrated game for the 90's, in its uncomplexed atmosphere of contemporary screenplay standards (prisons) as for its chiseled and demanding gameplay. Universes that existed for themselves without worrying about playing or receiving it.
Nothing insurmountable though, thanks to checkpoints. It was finally a kind of die and retry. I'll have to do it again. I still remember the monumental box that was sitting in the office library alongside Tomb Raider 2, Dracula and the first educational games that have no better press today.
I'm also surprised that he never came out in version adapted to modern equipment and TVs. I did it again a few years ago on PS1, then on emulator and it was always as fantastic as it was on the first day.
And like how to forget this beautiful box that smelled good new cardboard 🙂 Back then it really made you want to collect the jackets!