I’ve already had one disappointment this year trying to mix Lovecraftian elements into something other than a Call of Cthulhu-style adventure or RPG. The saving grace there is that the title in question is in Early Access, and has time to perhaps become better. About the same time that other title came up on my radar, so did Void Sails. The teasers suggested a more colorful and whimsical take on the Mythos, something a little less grim than Sunless Skies. They may have succeeded in that respect, but only at the expense of not hitting the mark elsewhere.
Void Sails casts you as the only child of an occult researcher who’s gone missing while traveling the distant stars in search of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. With a helping hand from “The Man In Yellow,” you hop into a solar sail powered voidship and undertake a perilous journey to rescue your father and maybe save the rest of the Universe while you’re at it.
There’s no denying that Void Sails manages to strike a coherent visual aesthetic and stick to it. The Unity engine does a good job of softening the non-Euclidean corners of the Mythos, giving us brightly gleaming starscapes, rocky alien landscapes, steampunk-esque structures and flying ships, and strange constructs. The UI is minimalist when you’re sailing and shooting within a given environment. And the various vignettes you encounter from random events seem to be taking a very Hades-like style in their character designs. All very colorful, all very well drawn. If there’s any serious complaint, it’s that the UI is perhaps a bit too contextual. When you’re tooling around on a new planet, trying to figure out puzzles and what not, you’ve got no idea what your supply situation is like. When you’re sailing between beacons, you have no sense of your inventory of various occult jimcracks. You also have no good way to look at your persona’s stats and get an idea of what they’re currently at until you happen to come across a test of one of those abilities and hope that the game is being accurate.
When it comes to the audio aspects of Void Sails, it’s the little details that come off best, but the larger elements don’t seem to gel quite as well. There are a number of various sound effects which help immerse the player in the environment, from the roar of cannons to the creaking of rust-coated gears as massive mechanisms open up. The voice acting is pretty decent, although the actors occasionally veer into the slightly hammy. The music is probably the weakest element, with short repetitive themes which shift when combat begins and shift back to the “environmental” tunes after the shooting stops. All in all, this particular section feels oddly neglected.
As far as the gameplay in Void Sails, one is confronted with both the simple and the obnoxious. The navigation and shooting for your ship in a given environment is pretty straightforward, though it lacks the polish of something like Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag or Sea of Thieves. True, your ship doesn’t exactly stop on a dime, but it is pretty responsive and navigation through tight spaces can be accomplished fairly easily if you’re smart about it. When in a planetary environment, your weapons are your fingers, destroying floating balloons for loot (which often feels far too stingy), powering up ancient artifacts with your solar cannon, and fighting off various ships which are far better armed than your own. Docking points are usually well indicated, and if it appears as though it isn’t lit on your first visit, it tends to indicate some as yet uncompleted task such as an undefeated enemy or a quest step untaken.
However, it’s the combat setups which occasions a lot of discontent. Your ship constantly feels undergunned when faced with large numbers of enemies, and since you’re having to eyeball your cannon shots, it can sometimes lead to both grinding contests and often humiliating defeats until you dope out the method you think the developers had in mind. Combat as a puzzle challenge isn’t exactly fun. It’s one thing when you’ve got a boss fight that requires a certain amount of strategy, but just trying to find out the best method to kill mooks quickly so you can get to the real puzzle kinda dampens the fun.
“Don’t you mean half-rations, Cap’n?”
“Did I stutter?”
In the same vein, the non-combat vignettes go hard on the obnoxiousness. The writing for the different vignettes is certainly good, and it definitely works to establish scene and character quite well. The hitch is when you’re faced with a test of your abilities. You’ll certainly get an indicator of what’s being tested, and you’ll certainly get an option to try and improve your odds by using different objects you pick up as part of your travels. Thing is that the RNG doesn’t feel like it’s playing fair. It feels as though there are certain events which you are going to fail no matter what and certain events you are going to pass no matter what. And trying to figure out which is which often feels like an exercise in futility. Bear in mind, I’ve played games with systems like Call of Cthulhu where you’re trying to roll under a target number. But this legitimately feels like there’s no correlation between the ability you’re rolling against and the target you’re trying to hit. It’s almost gratuitously insulting when you try to use an item to improve your odds and the roller completely blows past that number. As a result, any sort of narrative tension generated is lost by the searing rage you feel when a bad roll really screws you over. I’ve had bad rolls with dice before in other games, but this one just feels sadistic.
Beyond that, the overall storyline feels oddly… stilted. You can make choices which have nothing to do with any sort of skill checks, just shaping the narrative in what feels the most awkward A/B testing run ever. Some choices may have effects on the story later on, and some choices are instantly rendered moot, making the effort spent feel completely wasted. The individual lines are good, but the narrative as a whole is a shambling mess.
Void Sails has enough to appeal to casual players who’ve never really done a deep dive on the Mythos and who aren’t looking for the usual brain-shattering madness associated with it. If you can live with the sometimes capricious RNG elements, overreliance on badly stacked battle scenarios, and not-quite “SyFy Original” quality story, more power to you. Otherwise, you might want to leave this ship in the dry dock.
Axel reviewed Void Sails on PC with a provided review copy.
