A Void Hope [Review]
Elden Pixels’ A Void Hope is an atmospheric adventure with a killer soundtrack.
Image credit: Elden Pixels
A married couple that’s struggling, but in love. A mysterious plague that makes people forget everything they love and turns them into hollow, violent creatures. A dangerous city shrouded in darkness, collapsing and in neglect. This is A Void Hope.
The game has two protagonists, a married man and woman who long to make a family. They move to a forest cabin to wait for the illness to blow over in the city, but when it doesn’t, the woman insists she knows what’s needed for a cure and leaves to find the scientists. Her husband is confused. She insists they’ve discussed this before. Is he falling victim to the illness and forgetting? Is she? When she leaves, he goes to look for her. Ultimately, you’ll control both husband and wife during the adventure.
Image credit: Elden Pixels
A Void Hope is a side-scrolling platformer with a focus on exploration. You venture into different parts of the city and its surroundings, presented in an overworld map. Once you enter a level, you must complete a set of objectives—usually some combination of remembering a memory, finding an item, or finding an exit. Your character can jump, push boxes, interact with sparkling objects and doors, and use inventory items. The first item you’ll get is a gun that takes time to charge up for each shot; it’ll temporarily stun enemies so you can get by, but it’s better suited for destroying gate locks. For completionists, each level has hidden objects that the game will acknowledge in its completion percentage; I wasn’t clear on what getting 100% does. I topped out at 94%.
While the focus is exploration, there are enemies which you must avoid. Every area of the game is filled with people loitering in the background, all grey and shadowy from the infection. Any of these people can transform into a dark creature that will attack you, but never more than one at a time. The way the game uses the background sprites is inventive and has a great effect, with people sometimes pointing Invasion of the Body Snatchers style when it happens. Despite the focus not being combat, I would have liked A Void Hope to explore this idea further and lean more into horror, particularly since your options for defense are so limited. As it stands, you’ll very quickly learn how to avoid enemies and they’ll just become an annoyance. From the trailer, I expected A Void Hope to be least a little scary, and it wasn’t at all.
Image credit: Elden Pixels
The game’s graphics are rendered in a perfectly executed pixel art style. Lighting is simpler than I’ve seen in many modern games that look like this, using simple masks rather than projected light that can make shadows, but it’s more authentic to the 16-bit era that the game emulates. This look was what immediately drew me into wanting to play A Void Hope.
Every location is shrouded in shadow with few lights or fires to create spots of illumination. The ambiance it creates is fantastic, but that’s all it is—atmosphere. I think not using light and shadow as a game mechanic is a huge wasted opportunity, just like not doing enough with the NPCs randomly becoming monsters. While playing, I was thinking lighted areas would eventually become safe havens. This never happens.
Image credit: Elden Pixels
The most memorable part of A Void Hope is its soundtrack. Waveshaper composed a truly great synthwave score for the game. Without the music coupled with the game’s excellent sound design, A Void Hope would have been a far lesser experience. You can check out the soundtrack on Spotify.
Perhaps horror wasn’t Elden Pixels’ goal with this game; maybe I’m judging it unfairly simply because the game isn’t what I expected. But horror would be a great vehicle to explore the themes present in this game and would have made me feel more invested. Nevertheless, A Void Hope is still a good game and a great experience, well worth its short playtime.
A Void Hope is available now on PC (Steam / GOG) and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Nintendo Switch
