Voidwrought Review (Switch)

This will shock you, but Voidwrought is an indie Metroidvania game on the Switch. It’s fair to say that Nintendo’s hybrid has no shortages of games in the genre (including Metroid and Castlevania), so anything new must really do something to standout.

It’s a good thing then that Voidwrought really does try to do things a little bit differently. The first thing you’ll notice is that the game looks incredible. Everything from cutscenes to the general level design is presented in a gorgeous dark comic book style. To match this, the flow of movement is as smooth as the visuals with the games trademark being that it’s a fast-paced take on the genre. In these respects, it really does stand out in a positive way.

The general look of the design is a sort of comic book inspired mashup of Deadcells, Blasphemy and Dark Souls with a mixture of both technological and biological terrors inhabiting the environments. It definitely has a continually brooding and menacing tone to it that works well with the general bleakness of the game’s difficulty.

The steep learning curve may put some gamers off, the environment is harsh to navigate, and most enemies take a considerable amount of damage before they go down. This is all fine until you end up repeating sections multiple times. There are save points of course but they aren’t that prevalent. One concession to this is that any major object collected, or event triggered, will still have happened when you die and respawn at your last save point.

In a game which is generally difficult the bosses are, perhaps surprisingly, quite well balanced. There are certainly sticking points but once you have learned how they behave they don’t take crazy amount so damage before going down which helps to keep the game flowing.

There are a few issues though. First of all, the plot doesn’t really carry much of an impact. We would struggle to tell you what you are doing and why beyond the obvious Metroidvania exploration. We had no real idea what the overall goal was. Perhaps more concerning, the game also isn’t very good at giving you clear feedback regarding things like getting or damage.

The cartoon style is beautiful, but it does give things a lack of weight and impact, so it can be difficult to know if you are being hit or how hard you are hitting yourself. The health bar is also an issue. There is one of course but it doesn’t stand out that well and there is little other visual feedback to give an indication you are about to die. This led to a fair few deaths when healing was otherwise available.

Overall, Voidwrought succeeds in bringing something slightly different to the Metroidvania template. This is impressive enough when you consider how many games there are out there in the genre. It never fully clicked with us though in the way some of the other games have. That moment when you are just zooming around feeling like a super being never really came and, in the end, the few flaws did start to wear away at us. It’s a beautifully crafted game that runs amazingly well, but it is also perhaps one for gamers out there looking for a more hardcore experience. If you are into the genre though, this is well worth checking out as it’s somewhat unique in a crowded market.

Overall 7/10