Where
will you go when you die? Will you become an angel on a cloud playing
a harp? Or will you go to Valhalla and party until Ragnarök?
Well, it doesn’t really matter because according to bitComposer no
matter where you are going, you must first make a stop in The Void.

The Void (the place, not
the game) is a sort of halfway house between the planes of existence.
If you do well here, you may return to life. If you fail, you continue
on to permanent death.

The
Void was once the abode of an Artist. He created a beautiful collection
of chambers filled with buildings and gardens. He populated it with
Sisters to care for it. And then he left.

Once the Artist was gone,
color began to drain from the chambers. But color is also life in
the Void and the Sisters became weak. Evil creatures came in from
Chaos to feed on the unprotected color. Brothers came to protect and
use the Sisters, but they could not provide color. And then you arrived.

The Void is now a dark
and gloomy place. Almost all color is gone – there is only the occasional
sickly flower. The Sisters hide themselves and cling to what little
color they have left. The gardens could grow color, but they have
no life. Color could be mined from the caves, but it’s too weak to
see and gather.

If
only you could fill your empty hearts with color, you could return
to the land of the living. If only you could restore color to all
the Sisters, you might not want to leave.

The Void
(the game, not the place) is a Resource Management Game, like Warcraft
2 or Starcraft. You start with very limited
resources (color) which you must use wisely to harvest more color,
strengthen yourself, feed your friends and defeat your enemies. That
much is straight forward, but Ice-Pick Lodge have added some original
twists which make this a new and unique game.

First,
you will notice from the screen shots that the chambers are very dark.
You will probably want to play this game with the lights turned off.
But once your eyes get used to it, the graphics are beautiful. Movement
is full 3D using the classic WASD keys to move, mouse to aim and space
bar to hop. The artistry is top notch and you will relish the opportunity
to explore.

The background music is
beautiful and moody. The voice acting is superb. There is nothing
here to detract from your immersion into the game.

But
it is the game play where The Void really shines.
This is not a simple Save-Up-to-Buy-the-Next-Item scenario. There
is a richness and complexity to the environment which will require
you to carefully consider each of your decisions.

Take a look at the screen
shot of the gray man with what appear to be clumps of grapes on either
side of the screen. This is your “camera obscura,” or
dark room. Every character in the game has his/her own and it is here
where you can directly interact with a character. Those bulbous “grapes”
on either side are actually hearts. There are also hearts inside your
body.

When
ever you collect some color, it goes into one of the hearts on the
right hand side. Each heart can hold up to 100 units of its color.
But you can do nothing with this raw color while it remains there.
It must be processed. From your camera obscura you can transfer some
color from the right hand heart to your own heart where it will give
you life. You start off the game by placing one heart inside your
body. There are a total of twenty to find. Each heart can hold a different
color.

When
you leave a chamber, you enter the Void. This is the only way to travel
between chambers. You can see this in the screen shot which looks
like a collection of globs all interconnected by ropes – almost
like fat nerve cells. Two things happen while you are in the Void:
time passes and color gradually leaves your heart(s) and enters the
hearts which were on the left side of your camera obscura. There it
becomes precious “Nerva” which is the only resource you
have for interacting with your environment. But beware, if all of
the color leaves your heart(s) you will die. So enter the Void, get
the job done and leave and soon as you can.

Once you are back in a
chamber, there are many things you can do with “Nerva”

• Travel to another chamber
  from within the Void
• Talk to a Sister
• Give some Nerva to
  a Sister
• Reanimate a tree so
  that it will grow more color for you, but you will not be able to
  harvest until the next cycle
• Attack an enemy. You
  can harvest color from a defeated enemy, but only during the next
  cycle
• Empower a mine so that
  you can harvest the color from it
• Activate a trap for
  a Brother

Notice
how several things required you to wait until the next cycle before
you could harvest the color. But time only passes while you are in
the Void. It will take several well planed trips to safely allow a
cycle to pass.

You interact with your
environment by using your Nerva to paint specific patterns known as
Glyphs. The first Glyph you have access to allows you to transfer
Nerna to another object, say to a Sister or to reanimate a tree. Additional
Glyphs will defend you, attack your enemies or help you in the mines.
The more Nerva you use to create the Glyph, the more powerful its
effect. You gain access to a new Glyph with each new heart you acquire.

Now
if all of this weren’t complicated enough, there is yet one more variable
you must consider. Each color has its own property. Gold is the color
of Trust. Green is the color of Defense. And so on. Using different
colors in the same situation can lead to different effects.

Sound overwhelming? Not
to worry. The game comes with a nice users manual which explains many
of the details. The first Sister will then guide you through her set
of chambers to introduce you to the basics of game play. After that,
the rest should be fun to discover.

The
Void is different, but does it work? Is it fun to play? I
would have to say, “Yes.” While the mechanics are different,
they are consistent. The pacing is good and while there is the occasional
action sequence where you must confront an enemy, there is still lots
of exploration and discovery. If you enjoy games such as Warcraft
2 or, to a lesser extent, Tower Defense games, then you will
enjoy this game.

I give The Void
a solid “A” for innovation and delivering
it in the highest professional manner.

System Requirements:

• Operating System: Microsoft
  Windows© XP-SP2/Vista
• Processor: Intel Pentium
  © 4 2GHz/AMD Athlon 2000+ (Dual Core recommended)
• RAM: 512 MB (1 GB recommended)
• Graphic Card: GeForce
  FX 5600 128MB/ATI Radeon 9600 128 MB With Shader Model 3.0 or higher
  (recommended: nVidia GeForce 7600 /ATI Radeon X800 256 MB)
• 8-speed-DVD-Rom-drive
• Disk Space: 6GB
• DirectX 9.0c compatible
  soundcard