Voidling Bound Review - Battling the One-Eyed Monster

ScrambledAshton
Jun 9
7 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcSoptD1MEk

There are a fair share of creature collectors on the market, you know, the games that have you catching, evolving, hatching, and fighting with colorful creatures, all with their own unique skills and abilities. However, developers Hatchery Games have taken this genre and added in lots of sci-fi shooter fun that is sure to help it stand out from the crowd. But does this twist on the monster-taming genre work, or is it just another monstrosity?

This sci-fi adventure puts you in the shoes of a ‘Space Wrangler,’ a faceless soldier who can take direct mental control over a species known as ‘Voidlings,’ who are actually a series of different and unique creatures that all happen to be immune to the effects of a corrupting plague that has destroyed most of humanity and many of the planets in the solar system. Once you’ve got control of your colorful little guy, you’ll venture out on missions, clearing corruptions, fighting waves of enemies, tackling boss fights, and maybe returning home with a couple of eggs to hatch into your sanctuary. And then once you’ve done that, you’ll do it all again.

The story of Voidling Bound is primarily delivered in its opening cutscene and doesn’t go much further than the brief description I’ve already given you. But along the way, you will hear—well, read—tales of the many excursions, missions, and ultimately failures of the teams and humans who have come before. Though most of it is just to set up the next set of short missions, there isn’t any lore to be found while exploring or much more detail about the situation our heroes have found themselves in. So if you’re going into this wanting a strong narrative, you’re going to be disappointed. But if you’re coming into it for a fun romp, then you may find yourself having a much better time.

Speaking of fun romps, that is exactly what Voidling Bound is. The main gameplay loop isn’t particularly trying, nor do you really have to think too hard about the choices you’re making. But let me break it down for you.

Voidlings come in a variety of different types. Kwipecks have fast-firing projectiles and high-damage rockets, Gilik’s do shotgun-type damage and deflect incoming damage, and Gwigoon’s do close-up attacks that spawn a bunch of little clones to fight alongside it, which is kind of dark when its special ability causes mini versions of itself to explode mere inches from its face, pretty traumatic for that little goob.

Each species can also be evolved into one of two different damage types: fire, radiation, frost, etc., using Mutagens that you gather from each run. The evolutions bolster your little guys and give them some new parts, colors, and designs that down the line you can use to create a truly ungodly creature that deals huge damage to more difficult enemies. Evolutions also change and adapt the way voidlings play, so you can tailor each individual little guy to your specific taste.

Outside of infusing them with elemental types, you can upgrade each species’ skill trees using research points, upgrades that carry across the entire bloodline so you can get your Gwigoon’s beefed up as soon as they emerge from those golden eggs. Speaking of which, you get a LOT of them. Each level has a few hidden eggs (of which 2 are golden and count towards your star total), and you’ll be rewarded with a couple for each completed mission, so by the time you return to your hatchery you’ll be swimming in freshly birthed beasts who mostly just get sent to your sanctuary never to be seen again. Oh, actually, this is one of my small annoyances with the UI in this game. You’ll assign one voidling as your main one, have room for 8 other creatures in your ‘paddock,’ and then the others in the sanctuary are listed in a big grid. You can ‘release’ any voidlings you want to clear up your roster, but every time you send one back into the wild, the cursor resets to having selected your main guy…who you probably don’t want to be allowing to frolic around the universe with all the points you have invested in it. This was mainly a controller issue but something worth noting.

There are a few other things to do on the ship: upgrade health stims, build a gym so your voidlings can work out, make them shag to create new creatures, and other upgrades that you can spend a bit of money on. But the main bulk of the game comes in the missions and quests you are sent out on. Typically, the missions take around 10-20 minutes, but the non-combat-focused missions do have a star reward for completing them in a much shorter time frame, so you can get through them speedier if you’re not a certified rambler like me.

There are a few different mission types. ‘Corruption Cleansing’ missions are the slightly longer ones, normally involving a small bit of exploration, bursting pustules to open doors, and ultimately culminating in ridding an area of all purple goo and fighting whatever boss pops out of the portal. Survival missions are normally wave-based, typically ending in a boss fight, though there are a few variations, i.e., ‘secure the area’ missions that weirdly didn’t have a boss.

The gameplay in these sections is pretty fun. Combat is satisfying; lower-level enemies get positively blasted once you start evolving your voidlings. It's not particularly fast-paced, which I didn’t mind too much, but I wonder if that could get a bit stagnant if you’re going for the highest reachable level in the combat ‘Abyss’. Plus, traversal is neat, with each area having a nice flow. Fun little offshoots neatly hide the collectibles in each area, and I only accidentally got somewhere I wasn’t supposed to once or twice… not for lack of trying, might I add. I honestly wish there were more of the ‘corruption cleansing’ missions. I am not a combat arena kind of gal, and I was mostly just ticking those off to level up my wrangler and get that little endorphin rush when a gold star popped up.

While overall combat is fun, a few flying bosses can be tricky to deal with while using certain voidlings, and with them being randomly assigned, you’re never quite sure if you’re going to get scuppered by the homie you’ve decided to mind meld with.

Oh, speaking of the mind meld, I have a gripe. Every time you boot up a mission, to hide the loading screen, you see the same cutscene over and over. Yes, I know you can skip it, but I’d much rather be sent into the Doctor Who opening credits style loading screen immediately than watch my guy get mounted up every few minutes.

I have a small issue with the sound design in this game as well, but you may very well correctly point out that I am being picky. The sound effects are so quiet and minimal that I truly thought there weren’t any for a good while. Don’t get me wrong, the music is fab, and I have no gripes with how well they have scored this one, but a little audio feedback boost wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Like I said, though, the music is great. There’s a good mix of songs for each occasion, and they’re suitably sci-fi forward without it just feeling like a carbon copy of the same few ‘space stings’ you hear so often. Plus, as our game mostly follows a series of little animals, we get a good mix of songs inspired by nature and the wilderness, which complement the look of this game so perfectly.

Speaking of the look, Voidling Bound is a gorgeous game. So often we see alien planets depicted in browns and greys, but you’ll struggle to find a frame in this game that doesn’t have some splash of the rainbow in it.

Our voidlings can become beautifully colorful, with every new evolution bringing us new eye, hair, and limb colors. Each biome and area, despite being ravaged by the purple plague, is still full of life and greenery and just a general cartoony whimsy that I so very much love. Our ship is filled with splashes of orange and green, and once again, despite the world seemingly ending, whoever built our ship made sure the Vivarium is full of nature.

And while I have already mentioned it, I think the developers (of which I think there are ONLY 9) deserve a special shout-out for just how many different designs they have created for each individual creature. Every evolution tree has tons of different variants, and with 9 different species on the roster, it feels very special to see just how much work has gone into creating Voidling Bound.

The game runs well on PC and Steam Deck, with my only gripe on the handheld being the size of the text…but that seems to be a pretty consistent issue across games. And while occasionally the voidlings would get stuck doing the same short movement over and over, I have seen much worse bugs and glitches in new titles, especially those that haven’t dipped into Early Access first.

I played the game on easy, because unfortunately, I simply do not have time to waste smacking my head against a boss, and I think ‘easy’ is perhaps the optimum word. I didn’t have any issue blasting through enemies and only died when taking on missions I was obviously under-leveled for, so if you are looking for something to blast through, whack this bad boy on easy and have a great time, or put it on hard and rip your dick off, dealer's choice.

Overall, I think Voidling Bound is an interesting addition to the genre. Yeah, it lacks a strong narrative and puts more focus on combat challenges than the corruption clearouts, which I personally found more engaging. But if you are looking for a low-stakes romp around a colorful universe while looking at adorably mutilated little guys, then perhaps you’ve found your dream game.

My issues with Voidling Bound are minimal, outside of a few things I was certainly being pedantic about, but I do think the devs could do with injecting just a little bit more of the color into the story and adding a couple more things to do for those of us who can give or take arena combat. To be honest, I don’t think I would be remiss by saying they may need to add a bit more content overall. So with that being said, I am awarding Voidling Bound a Bronze Genie Lamp of Approval.