Defeat cosmic horrors and re-establish an eldritch cult in Voidwrought, a hand-drawn 2D platformer.
Voidwrought is a Hollow Knight-inspired Metroidvania that centers around exploration and mobility, featuring a massive map for players to uncover and challenging encounters with lots of enemy variety.
So, how does the game compare to its main source of inspiration? Does it do enough to differentiate itself in a sea of other Metroidvanias? Find out in our full review for Voidwrought.
Voidwrought
Developer: Powersnake
Publisher: Kwalee
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: October 24, 2024
Players: 1
Price: $19.99
Voidwrought has us rebuilding an eldritch cult by unsealing deities and defeating forgotten horrors. The idea of acquiring followers and expanding your shrine as you explore the game’s areas is pretty fun, and there’s something really interesting about the incomprehensible ancient religion that the player helps rebuild.
The game’s enemies also follow an eldritch theme, ranging from undead to fleshy abominations and corrupted machinery. There’s a great amount of enemy variety, and each area introduces new enemy types with different moves and behaviors.
Voidwrought‘s bosses also have very cool and grotesque designs, but the basic combat system forces players to rush through fights instead of trying to finesse their way around encounters. The early game fights are especially difficult to maneuver around, so they basically become DPS checks where the player has to be hyper-aggressive to win as soon as possible.
Voidwrought‘s combat doesn’t necessarily evolve as the game goes on, as most of the upgrades that the player collects are focused on mobility. From beginning to end, the player uses a low-range melee attack to defeat enemies and can equip relics that grant you different skills.
Most of the relics are incredibly basic, granting skills that are very similar to each other and don’t really impact gameplay that much. There’s a good chance players will spend the entire game using the Claws of Rahtek, which increase melee damage dealt, and whatever horizontal ranged skill is currently available.
The player can also equip different souls, which give different bonuses like extra health, increased currency drops, or reducing the time it takes to heal. The equippable souls are a little more interesting than the relics and feature more diverse effects, but very few of them feel like game changers.
One of the biggest problems in Voidwrought is the insistence on not giving the player any extra moves or combat tools, instead only focusing on mobility to the point where it becomes redundant. The game’s later platforming challenges can be beaten in multiple ways, most likely as a way to compensate for how hidden some upgrades are, but that feels like a band-aid solution.
There’s a big overlap of skills in the game, especially when it comes to things that the player character should do by default. A ledge grab shouldn’t be an unlockable skill, and only finding a double jump six hours into the game is nonsense. Voidwrought‘s upgrades are visually unique, but their usage is always underwhelming.
A good chunk of the game’s skills are only used to interact with certain objects, basically turning them into glorified keys. Getting a new skill should bring something new to your moment-to-moment gameplay instead of being a convoluted way to interact with an object that opens a door.
Exploration in Voidwrought is pretty fun, and the game attempts to avoid the “wall-sniffing” part of Metroidvanias by providing objective markers that let you know roughly where the next objective is. This system comes and goes throughout the game, so it’s easy to feel lost when the game is not providing directions, but the markers are helpful when present.
One annoying thing is that some main progression paths can be hidden behind breakable walls, which aren’t exactly easy to spot a lot of the time. This happens reasonably early into the game and borders on malicious padding considering how straightforward exploration usually is except for these hidden entrances.
The game really opens up once you get the wall crawl and hook abilities, but it does have a few rough spots early on where you’ll be exploring every inch of the map trying to find the path forward. Thankfully, this part doesn’t last very long, but definitely stalls your progress early on, which can be frustrating for some.
Voidwrought is carried by its art and world, delivering a visually impressive experience with somewhat flawed gameplay. Most of the mistakes made by modern Metroidvanias are present here, especially when it comes to the unlockable upgrades, which have a hyper focus on mobility and almost completely ignore combat.
The lack of combat tools given to the player also directly reflects on the game’s enemies and bosses, who are forced to be kept simple because there’s only so much the player can do to fight them. A lot of the time it feels like encounters exist simply because they are an expectation of the genre, as the developers refuse to give the game’s combat a sense of escalation.
It’s definitely not wrong to make a Metrovania with a higher focus on exploration and platforming, but Voidwrought hurts itself by having very simple levels and barely any platforming challenges. This lack of commitment to a premise makes the game feel safe and mostly forgettable, as it doesn’t bring anything new to the overcrowded Metrovania genre.
Voidwrought was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Kwalee. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Voidwrought is available on Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
