Voices of the Void Preview

Voices of the Void. Man, where to start? After being deeply in love with Signal Simulator, its eerie atmosphere and the following disappointment of the developer just vanishing exactly three years ago, this game was added into my watchlist by the YouTuber IGP. Intrigued by the mechanics of another Signal Sim with a new approach and a lease on life for a similar experience, I went for it.

Voices of the Void (what I affectionately, and coincidentally, also call my thinking process) firstly appears with, as some may call it, worse graphics than good ol’ Signal Simulator, but catches you with its charm and changes in mechanics. No longer do you have to find Azimuth and Elevation manually, and no longer do you have to check for modules in each signal. No longer are you stuck in a vast desert landscape with sometimes silly signals, but are stuck in a dense forest with all kinds of unnerving sounds. You have to care for basic bodily needs, like hunger and stamina, and get most of the upgrades through the shop, where you can spend your hard-earned research money on download speed, cooldown on ping, garden gnomes and food.

While the primary objective is to find and process signals all around the visible (and invisible) galaxy and beyond, the game clearly rewards exploration outside of the bases’ walls (and beyond?). The Story mode gives people looking for an easy entry into the game the right chances and it shines in that regard - evoking that uneasy feeling and sometimes even changing that thought of “I’m all alone” to “I’d rather be alone right now”.

There are many little things to do in the game, from decorating, fixing servers through maths minigames, exploring the world, finding and solving strange puzzles as well as finding some loose ends, where your co-workers went plus the occasional bad decision. You will make them. You just won’t know about them, and that feeling will be looming with you all the time, even if there was no decision yet.

It doesn’t help that the game points you to a radar that tells you the amount of “Entities” in your general area, which can be, depending on the time and your personal mental state, completely freak you out even if it’s just your own devices being detected, and the working hall being pretty open. It also unnerves that you can lock doors, a trick that was also used in Signal Sim, but here with a four-digit passcode, adding a layer of emotional security on top. I won’t spoil too much, but lock your doors.

All in all, Voices of the Void shows massive promise, is free / pay-what-you-want to pick up, and is an experience worth experiencing. I cannot wait to see where this game is going - and so should you!