Voin is an extraction hack-and-slash RPG where players embody the vengeful spirit of lightning itself in an effort to eradicate the undead plaguing the world.
The game has recently been released into Early Access, featuring two large levels to explore, filled with powerful bosses and lots of varied equipment for players to try out.
So, can a hack-and-slash RPG work as an extraction game? Are the souls-like mechanics implemented well into the core gameplay? Is it too early to get into it? Find out the answer to these questions and more in our full preview for Voin.
Voin‘s gameplay loop is pretty simple; you arrive, kill everything you see in your path, collect whatever loot you find, open up a portal in the sky, and leave. The game is very reminiscent of Witchfire in the way it structures its runs, although it doesn’t lean into the brutal difficulty aspect.
Voin has a blend of light extraction and souls-like mechanics with the way its runs work. Every item picked up is corrupted and needs to be brought back to the Amarict, the game’s hub area, to be cleansed.
Dying makes you drop all corrupted items as well as all essence you are carrying, although your items are safe in your inventory after being cleansed. In true souls-like fashion, the player can do a corpse run to retrieve their dropped items, although dying again will make them disappear completely.
Voin‘s exploration is currently fun but unfortunately flawed. The game currently features two large maps, the Necrosever and Hadracon, each housing a unique boss fight, but for the most part it feels like you are just wandering around aimlessly looking for content, which simply isn’t there.
The game’s Early Access release is incredibly light, featuring what feels like less than three hours of content, and that’s factoring in a lot of player curiosity and a few deaths for good measure. It is incredibly fun to dash around the open world map feeling like a god, but crushing the same groups of enemies over and over stops being fun quickly.
There’s a good amount of enemy variety introduced after players make their way to the second map, so at the very least players have that to look forward to, although there isn’t much else to do aside from fighting the boss in each region and leaving.
Currently the most time-consuming thing to do in Voin is to upgrade your weapons, which takes essence. Essence is used to level up and can be lost on death if you fail your corpse run. Most items drop in the gray quality, being the lowest one, so it takes a good amount of essence to upgrade your weapons.
The current system has you upgrading an item to the primeval rarity and then feeding it weaker items to satiate its hunger. Do this with two items of the same category, and you can combine them into a firstborn item, which carries two primary affixes instead of a primary and a secondary.
There isn’t much need to interact with this system at the moment as it’s only really there for players to see what can be done through upgrades. There aren’t that many secondary affixes, and the primary ones are fixed per weapon, so the system isn’t necessarily felt that much.
Voin‘s combat is the real star of the show, letting the player brutalize waves of enemies with their swings and special lightning powers. Enemies are incredibly dangerous in groups and attack very frequently, forcing the player to constantly be on their toes.
The player has somewhere between 2-5 health points depending on the heart they equip, which can be recovered by striking enemies, creating a hyper-aggressive combat system where you are always trying to regain health by playing perfectly.
It is surprisingly quick how fast you can die if you are playing carelessly, but the game also feels like a power fantasy when you are playing well. Falling down from the sky into a group of enemies and decapitating them in one swing is a great feeling, which the game really helps sell with its visuals and sound design.
Voin is a pretty stylish game, featuring a low-poly aesthetic, which can be either played as-is on modern mode or with a few additions to make it closer to a PS1 game on retro mode. The game’s visuals don’t feel like they were picked at random, as Voin respects its own art style a lot.
The stop-motion visuals are definitely something I did not know I wanted in a game, looking incredibly stylish and affecting both the main character and enemies. Something about it makes everything look like an action figure, which is very pleasing to watch in motion.
Voin nails the epic dark fantasy world that it sets out to build, both in tone and visuals, making the player feel like they are an ancient force that was unleashed to deal with the undead problem. The narration and elegantly designed main hub area also help reinforce that feel substantially.
Voin feels great to play, but it’s tough to recommend it as it currently stands due to the very small amount of content. The game’s Early Access release is much closer to a demo, only taking something like 2 hours for players to see all of its content.
The game does have a promising roadmap, although it’s only really getting a new world halfway into 2025, so what you get is what you see for now. The new playable character announced for the inferno update is something I’m definitely interested to see, although that’s also going to take a while.
Voin‘s world and enemy design are fantastic, and it feels like a power fantasy given playable form, which is why I want it to succeed, but it might have released a little too early for its own sake. I definitely advise anyone interested to check out what it has going on for now and come back later when it has more content; just manage your expectations, as it is far from a finished game.
Voin is available on Microsoft Windows (through Steam’s Early Access).
