Reader, I’m in trouble. Void War is really, really good. That’s good news for the two-person indie development team Tundra, who may be about to make lots and lots of money. But it’s bad news for me, an ADHD-afflicted games writer with a lifelong obsession for Warhammer 40,000 and poor impulse control, because Void War has me down bad.
Tundra kindly provided me with a free preview of Void War’s current alpha build, and in the two days between getting the code and writing this article I’ve gone from the fringes of the galaxy to the Imperial Core Worlds four times, just barely keeping up with my actual responsibilities as an adult human.
That build is available now from Itch.io, and you can wishlist the full game on Steam. I saw very few of the bugs promised on the Itch page, though weirdly, I’ve had to repeatedly extract the .exe from the .zip folder and put it back in next to my save files as my system seems to consider it heretech and keeps removing it. This has not slowed my roll.
Just like its obvious gameplay inspiration FTL: Faster than Light, Void War has an addictive core gameplay loop: you hop from starsystem to starsystem, fight tactical battles, and gradually acquire new crew and new ship components as you face ever more dangerous foes. If, like me, you’re a sci-fi nerd whose first love is Warhammer 40k, not Star Trek, you’ll find Void War’s grimdark and gothic sci-fi setting incredibly alluring.
It’s not an official Warhammer 40k game, mind, and the aesthetic similarities aren’t so close that GW’s lawyers will be antsy, but 40k fans will vibe with it. The God-King has fallen, and you – a traitor to the Imperials, a heretic to the Cults – must travel to the heart of the rotten Empire to reach the Vault of Souls, and fulfil your destiny. Enough detail has been sketched in to bring the grimdark setting to life, but not so much that it pulls focus from the gameplay.
That moment to moment gameplay is, superficially, a near total match for FTL. Your ship, and an enemy vessel, appear as plan drawings, with key systems like your shields, engines, or weapons located in different rooms. You can allocate power to different parts of the ship, direct crew to different stations, and target different elements of the enemy vessel to try and cripple their engines or disrupt their guns.
There’s plenty of tactical gameplay in determining which enemy components to target and with what weapons: beams are devastating but totally stopped by shields, ion weapons do no damage but can disrupt systems, and missiles ignore shields but eat up your precious munitions, to name a few. FTL veterans know what to expect.
What’s substantially different is the massive focus on your crew’s powers and abilities. Boarding enemy ships is possible in FTL, but it’s a central feature in Void War. The very first vessel you start with comes with an assault sled, which lets you hurl your crew across the void and into the enemy ship.
There’s weapons, armor, tools, and consumables to find and equip to your crew, and a kitted out assault team can dismantle the enemy shields or kill the enemy crew entirely without destroying the ship. Some vessels contain cargo pods with extra loot that can only be claimed by getting your troops on board.
Then there are the psychic powers, many of which you can project straight into an enemy vessel. You can summon daemons, create fires, abduct or mind-control enemy warriors… it’s a whole parallel line of attack. Between psychics, teleporters, and your assault sled, the right crew can conquer the enemy without even firing a gun.
The factions you encounter each have unique troops and psychic powers. While they aren’t one to one matches for Warhammer 40k factions, they wouldn’t look out of place standing next to them. The Raiders like to depressurize enemy vessels and board them in vacuum suits; the Death Cult of Golgoth is all about poison and the undead: the Blood Cult’s sorcerers can empower their magic by sacrificing Blood Thralls, and so on.
You can increase the frequency with which merchants offer you troops or equipment from a given faction by pledging allegiance at a Shrine you encounter in your journey – though the Cults will require a sacrifice to show your commitment. Or you can mix and match crew to your heart’s content.
There are certainly synergies to be found, but happenstance may require you to pivot. I started one run building a lethal assault team, lost them all when I didn’t extract them in time and the vessel they were raiding exploded around them, and had to pivot hard into hull-breaching weaponry.
One other big difference from FTL is the difficulty. While I’ve beaten FTL’s final boss a handful of times with a couple of ships, I’ve won four runs of Void War back to back. It is easy – to begin with. Each completion unlocks a new, higher ‘Torment’ difficulty level. I’ve just started a run on level four of twelve, and I’m starting to sweat.
I’m happy with that approach to difficulty. Roguelikes always send you back to the start and show you content over and over; this way I’m getting to replay content from the entire game, not just the early stages. On my fifth run I’m still encountering new things: I’ve hardly visited Tech Cult star-systems in my runs so far, and I want to build a proper Blood Cult crew with lots of sorcerers and plenty of thralls to sacrifice.
There’s meta-progression too, with new ships to unlock and new captains to purchase with the points you get for your runs. If I want more challenge I’ll keep creeping up through the Torment levels – but dialling it down so I can easily experiment with a particular starting ship and progression path also has its appeal.
Bugs aside, Void War already delivers on everything it promises, with aplomb. There’s already more than enough content to justify the asking price, and as the game is moddable, it seems very likely that eager fans will add things like Space Marine Chapters and Borg Spheres in time.
Consider this a very strong recommendation for a game I may have to remove from my computer. I have a child! She needs to see her father!
Love grimdark fiction? Our guide to the Horus Heresy books explains both the official reading order, and gives suggested reading orders to track the story of each of the Space Marine Legions.
Source: Wargamer
