Voids Vigil is a very generic and average horde survival arena shooter which does nothing exceptional, nor adds anything new to the genre, to make it stand out from its competitors. Furthermore, it is basically a clone of Boneraiser Minions, the developer's previous game, except that you use weapons instead of letting minions fight for you, it has been reskinned to have a dark and dystopian sci-fi aesthetic, and it has a (slightly) more serious tone and less sexual and raunchy innuendos as a result of the tonal shift (although not by much since the developer has been slowly adding more).

Overall, I don't recommend it because it's a soulless copy of Boneraiser Minions and costs the same but has much less content. It doesn't feel as if the developer learned anything from Boneraiser Minions which has resulted in a painful Early Access that has felt extremely amateurish and been riddled with bugs, making it seem as if they simply wanted funding throughout the Alpha and Beta stages of the game rather than developing a more complete product. Additionally, the juvenile potty humor which has unfortunately been carried over from Boneraiser Minions (where it fit much more naturally) doesn't fit this type of aesthetic nearly as well and has gotten stale, making the jokes feel out-of-place and forced.

Note: this review is current as of Patch v7.5 released on 9 January 2025 and will only be updated for major patches which add significant gameplay changes or achievements.

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S U M M A R Y

- The gameplay is bog standard for the genre and most runs will feel the same because the majority of the overabundance of classes, weapons, and items don't change how you play the game and feel superfluous;
- The replay value is quite poor, unless you enjoy competing for high scores on the leaderboards, because you'll see everything that the game has to offer within the first few hours;
- The graphics are cute and the sprites are vivid which really pop against the dark backgrounds and overall aesthetic of the game;
- The soundtrack is composed of passable royalty-free dark synthwave songs while the sound effects are fantastic with a proper audio setup; and
- The story is almost non-existent and the scant amount that is present feels like a low-effort veneer that was begrudgingly added solely for the purpose of matching the aesthetic.

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A C H I E V E M E N T S

The game has 134 achievements which will all be acquired throughout casual play and should take 20-30 hours if you play on the easiest difficulty; however, be prepared to keep up with the game if you are an achievement hunter as the developer releases a major update every week or two on Monday.

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R E V I E W

The gameplay is standard for the horde survival genre and introduces nothing new to make the game even remotely unique or exciting. Although discovering things for the first time and learing the mechanics is initially thrilling, this exhilaration will quickly wear off after the first few hours as you will realistically have seen everything that the game has to offer despite its wide cast of classes, the multitude of weapons, and the plethora of abilities, drones, and passive items.

Although the classes each have slightly different mechanics, the majority of them aren't unique enough to truly give a different experience from one another which ultimately leads to runs feeling the same and only changes how you approach the game from a tactical perspective.

The weapons also have a similar issue because there is no discernable difference between them and, thus, they feel superficial rather than impactful. Despite this, there is an interesting system which scales their damage based on certain elements, and groups the weapons by element, but the game is easy enough that this system can be completely ignored by casual players; however, taking advantage of it makes the game extremely easy and you can easily delete the final boss within a second of spawning into the arena. The only time that you might want to take advantage of this is if you are playing on the hardest difficulty (which still isn't that challenging) or if you are competing for a high score on the leaderboards.

The game has five different game modes:
- Story, where you go from arena to arena, visit shops in between each, and fight the boss at the end;
- Campaign, which is currently unfinished but will have you choose which arenas to visit on a map and will probably function exactly like the story mode;
- Survival, where you try to stay alive for as long as possible but at some point it becomes impossible because the enemies scale far beyond what you are capable of and one-shot you;
- Daily/weekly seeded trials, where you can compete in a challenge run for a high score on the leaderboard; and
- Card mini-game, which is similar to Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII but is stripped-down and isn't worth playing at all.

The graphics are made up of very colorful and retro-styled pixel art which looks quite good and unique in contrast to the purposely dark and gritty backgrounds.

The soundtrack is composed of decent royalty-free dark and gritty synthwave songs which match the theme and aesthetic of the game quite well and don't become annoying despite looping quickly; however, they aren't worth listening to outside of the game unless you're really into the genre. The sound effects are amazing with a proper set of headphones as they are deep, resounding, and sonorant.

The story is vague and minimalistic, only being presented in cryptic messages shown prior to the title screen as well as when you win a run. Although the basis of the story has plenty of potential for expansion, I doubt that this will be done since it's common for games of this genre to forgo the story altogether which is lamentable because this concept is interesting, it could very easily lean into cyberpunk and hacker themes, and the developer clearly has the ability to write eloquently since the tutorial has some quippy dialogue which made me laugh.

The in-game status menu is irritating to navigate because the icons of all passive items that you have collected are displayed on one panel at the bottom of the screen and, whenever you select one to see its details, its description box covers the entire panel and your passive items which is utterly baffling to me and they should have been split up into their own categories on a separate page since you can collect so many of them.

Another thing which is odd about the status menu is that it has a "Config" option where you can only change visibility options but no other game options such as audio, visual or controls; however, they are available via the pause menu which renders the Config option on the status menu completely redundant and this kind of design choice shows the lack of thought that the developer has put into the finer details of the game.

Overall, I don't recommend it because it's simply a very average run-of-the-mill game, there are frankly better things to spend your time on in general, and it is extremely overpriced for the amount of content that it has compared to Boneraiser Minions. That being said, I would recommend choosing either this OR Boneraiser Minions once it is out of Early Access and is official released but absolutely not both because once you've played one of them then you've essentially played the other so it will come down to which aesthetic you want to experience -- dystopian sci-fi or cutesy fantasy.

Amazing, assemble your roboboners and your finest crystal accoutrements and prepare for the 5 Ds, Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and. Dodge so as not to eat a face full of robobussy or searing hot robojaculate and instead get your grubby robofingerings on the finest wares this side of Cybertron. Collect the green coggy goodness before is degrades, the exit portal blasts them away like it's only job is to blow so be sure to scoop them up.

And remember, through superior firepower all things can be accomplished. Equip the BFG69 and make sure you have lasting projectiles that bounce so you can play energy pinball with your THOTbot foes and show them the ERROR404 of their ways.