The creature taming genre can never have enough entries, in my very humble opinion. Combining that experience of collecting new critters with fast-paced, varied combat is a new entry into the field; Voidling Bound by indie developer Hatchery Games. It’s the first game coming out of the Canada-based studio, which was awarded a grant by Epic Games back in 2022 to help bring their game to life, as it highlighted the best of the Unreal Engine. If Voidling Bound is anything to go off of, the future in their offices is bright, as the experience is one familiar yet new, and with some surprisingly unique customization options for your voidlings that bring the genre to unexplored peaks.
In a Beautiful Bind
Voidling Bound revolves around mentally “binding” with these native creatures, called voidlings, that you hatch from eggs and taking control of them to fight against a variety of elementally-designated enemy threats out on the worlds in the solar system. You’ll choose one of your voidlings before each mission, land on the planet, and either try and cleanse the level of the invasive “lesion” growth, or you’ll try to survive waves of enemies. At the end of both, you’ll face off against one of many bosses before completing the mission. The levels where you’re exploring around, attempting to cleanse the various areas of purple goo are a highlight, and it was very fulfilling to search high and low through the flora-filled alien worlds that you are trying to fight through. You’re tasked with searching for eggs, research points, and these powerful orbs called mutagens, which serve as the basis for evolving your base-level voidlings hatched from eggs. As a fan of these types of games, it is always satisfying when your curiosity is rewarded. I can’t tell you how fun it was to reach one of the highest points in the first level and find a cute plushie up at the top. Turns out, there’s one of those on most of the levels, just waiting for those with an adventurous spirit to find them. Each of these types of levels has bonus objectives attached to collecting all of the bonus mutagens and special golden eggs, which helps keep up with what you may have missed on your first run-throughs of the levels. However, you’re unable to keep track of how many you still need to get during the actual playthrough of the level, which I would’ve loved to have at times when I may have forgotten to look beforehand. It was a small inconvenience though, and I just made a habit of noting exactly what I needed to scour for before taking on the boss at the end of the mission.
Deadly Dozens
Eggs for new voidlings can either be picked up during levels or eventually acquired from breeding two of your already acquired creatures. Getting to crack open your new ovi-presents was always a treat, especially once you got into the breeding side of the game. Your new voidlings could carry special traits that improved their base stats, or, as with golden eggs found out on the planet’s surface, were a special design and type that carried with them new perks and skills that could completely change how the creature played. Though there are only 9 voidlings, the amount of colorful and creatively designed variations on them is impressive. Plus, getting to keep up with all of the ones you have (or don’t have) is easily done with the Voidpedia made available within the game. It was exciting getting to see the silhouettes and names of the critters I had yet to create yet, and the whole experience of unlocking new fur patterns, wing appendages, tails, attacks, special movement abilities, and combination possibilities with different elements was a completionist's dream. This pursuit of personalization is heavily rewarded, too. Eventually, as you evolve and hatch more and more voidlings, each of their specific traits, color patterns, skills, and perks can be used to craft your own voidling with the options of your choosing. This means that even if you want to try out a different evolutionary line on a new voidling, it doesn’t mean you can’t mix it up later into a combo you want. What’s even more impressive is that colors, designs, patterns and more aren’t exclusively limited to the voidling you originally unlocked them on. You can mix and match to your heart’s content. This type of customization had me wishing that it was available in more creature collecting games.
Lots of Leveling
The various leveling systems within Voidling Bound were deep enough to be engaging without being overwhelming, and the way they organize how each system operates felt natural and rewarding. You’ll find yourself pursuing multiple paths of growth at once, whether that’s by leveling up your voidlings automatically through a training station (sorta like a Pokemon Daycare), evolving voidlings into new variants on their species to increase your “Wrangler” rank to enable more enhancements to your home base’s abilities, or by taking the voidlings out into missions to acquire more mutagens or level them up the old fashioned way (with violence against invasive species!) Planning out and executing what you wanted to do to improve either your voidlings or your ability to make better ones felt less like a chore and more like good gameplay, in my experience. Though as I’ll explain a little bit later, the endgame content did feel a bit harsh in expected execution compared to the rest of the process leading up to that final available mode after completing the main campaign.
Figuring out Your Favorites
As far as the combat goes, it’s truly a mixed bag, and that feels completely on purpose. I knew going in that with 9 total voidling species, all with their own unique control and combat style, there was no way I’d love each of them. What’s great is that’s totally okay, since you could take any and all of them through any level you wanted to. Some, like the chicken-like Kwipeck, or the cat-like Anami, can perform well against targets at a distance while taking advantage of nimble movement abilities. Others, like the bulldozing Ur-Sek, or the demonic savage Morfang are devastating up-close attackers. Depending on the level’s brand of enemies, you may prefer one over the other. Hatching a new species and then immediately taking it out into a level for a spin never got old, and I only wish there were more than 9 types to try out, if I was being greedy. At least there are a ton of different paths you can take the base voidlings down that mix things up and allow for a bevy of combat styles to discover and test out. Luckily, there’s no harm in trying out whatever voidling you want at will, since you’ll still keep all of the research points, mutagens, and eggs you acquire during the levels, and your voidlings continue leveling up as you fight. What’s more is that the higher your level, the more ability points you get to spend on your voidlings, which in turn makes the eggs you hatch from their breeding start off with higher base ability numbers.
As you play, you’ll eventually develop an affinity for certain voidlings and their combat styles. Once you do, it becomes beneficial to start selectively breeding and upgrading the ones you want to focus on maximizing so that you can push the 5 key stats for each voidling up higher and higher. Voidlings can be leveled up to 20, and with each level they get one attribute point that you can assign to one of five traits: strength, essence, vitality, recuperation, and agility. These numbers determine many of the key stats that affect qualities like combat damage, elemental effectiveness, healing ability, projectile fire rate, and tons more. During my playthrough of the main and optional missions that make up the campaign mode of the game, I didn’t have much trouble picking voidlings that countered the specific level’s main enemy type. I enjoyed the challenge of my Adventurer level difficulty, and could’ve bumped it up or down if I so desired.
The Endgame
Where does this all lead? The Abyss, Voidling Bound’s endgame mode. In this mode, you’ll take on an increasingly challenging gauntlet of levels, taking out bosses, completing cleansing objectives, and fighting off waves of enemies in various biomes and against rotating element types and other handicaps meant to take you out. It’s a truly daunting task, as at the end of each level, you choose whether to “cash out” your acquired points, mutagens, eggs, and Abyss-specific “Catalyzers” that further enhance your voidlings’ abilities, or whether you want to continue on to the next level and risk dying and losing all of your pickups. This is truly stressful, and I was able to proceed to level 20 before falling to a counter-element boss that chewed me up and spit me out quickly. It was a bit of a jump up from the previous level, and did cause a bit of heartache as I sat there at the end of a 45 minute long journey. I actually would’ve liked some tier-level system which gave you -something- if you reached certain level thresholds, but to each their own. It would truly be a fantastic achievement to get to that level 50 tier, and it’s something I can see diehards trying to achieve for sure. I’d rather a game have something to strive for that’s difficult than nothing at all. I’m curious how many other challenges are eventually part of The Abyss, especially as I near the elusive level 50 of the climb, which is the highest achievement you can earn in the mode.
Stunning Sci-Fi Scenes
Visually, Voidling Bound is a treat, with bountiful amounts of beautifully colorful palettes that feel alien and alive. It’s like a mix of the Savage Planet series of games and old-style Spyro levels. There’s not too much visual noise though, and it’s still relatively easy to keep track of important pickups, enemies, and eggs from far away distances. The use of color contrast, with shadows, deep blacks, and bright neons is super effectively used, and gives everything a very distinct visual identity that permeates through the menus, levels, and voidlings. Great care was obviously taken to keep every pixel of the experience in-line with the vibe they were trying to achieve of scientific, tech-driven creature crafting and action. As mentioned earlier, the ability to mix and match any color, skin pattern, eye design, and on and on across any voidling is incredibly fun. The game is also pretty generous with dolling out the currency needed to tinker with your voidlings, and some missions can be run through quite quickly if you’re in need of more eggs or to breed a pair to gain more to experiment with. The game also runs incredibly smoothly, with the process of starting and ending a level moving quite swiftly.
Each voidling is so unique in its structure and design, with their attacks matching their appearance in function, too. They’re sorta animal-ish, sorta digimon-ish, sorta Pokemon-ish, but stand all on their own as definitely not feeling like all of any of them. A truly handcrafted set of creatures that you get to take control of. Seeing how each is modified, added on to, and equipped with even more powerful accoutrements as they evolve is a highlight of Voidling Bound, and connoisseurs of creature collecting and visual candy will be in heaven here. It will be no small task to finish your voidpedia, especially with every voidling having over 30 variants, but it should feel less like a chore and more like an adventure.
Audio Excellence
Another highlight is the audio design. Just like the visuals, everything about the game hums with a feeling of interstellar awe. Orchestral, futuristic tunes that swell and glide through your ears truly make it feel like you’re prowling around an alien planet (because you are!) With so many newly created creatures, the execution of the growls, calls, chitters, and all the native noises of the foreign species and enemies is done superbly, and gives the same feeling as when you first watch a Jurassic Park film and hear all the sounds of dinosaurs that you feel like haven’t been heard in eons.
In Conclusion
Voidling Bound is a wonderfully delivered experience, and at $24.99 MSRP I feel it is an incredibly satisfying deal. It delivers on its promise of providing a fun, action-packed sci-fi 3rd person shooter that reinvents the monster taming genre. Are you going to find every voidling type and attack pattern one you want to pursue playing over and over again? Probably not. But it’s a dense, tightly constructed game that explores its premise to a thorough degree. It’s exciting that we get to have indie developers put this much love and care into this type of game, and I hope that dedication to a unique set of ideas is rewarded.
Thanks to the Developer & PiratePR for a Review Key | Voidling Bound is available on Steam & Epic Games, with future console releases planned
