Quick Look: Void Bastards

A subset of the random hallways generator genre.

Mike Mahardy has been talking this up and from what I see in the QL it looks incredibly boring, even for a roguelike. It just doesn't look that fun to actually do the shooty-shooty.

Yahoo!

Something about this game reminded me of this Apogee game called Blake Stone. Maybe it's the space theme? I just fell down a weird hole that ended with reading source code for old 3d shooters on Github....

Mio drinkers put on blast

This looks like it'd be perfect for watching TV or listening to a podcast while you play. Beyond that I'm not sure I'd ever boot it up.

This is right up my alley.

XIII was great, you two shush your mouths.

It was a struggle to keep watching after "rogue-like", but I want to keep an open mind.

Man, that art style...so good!

I don’t think they mention it but it’s on Xbox Gamepass.

Digging all of this. Some nice style, good to hear its got substance to back it.

@joelalfaro: It's the Rogue Legacy "vertical progression" rather than each run being a start from scratch.

Looks visually really neat, but the gameplay probably wouldn't keep me interested for too long. Might give it a whirl if I re-activate Game Pass.

XIII was good i will fight you

WOOWOO

AKA "inescapable grinding"

I have a rare condition, every time i hear "The Stanley Parable narrator" I feel sudden urge to buy the thing, but I don't know,combat just doesn't look interesting or satisfying and I don't like the look of the enemies...

@mechanized: flavoured water is still water ?‍♂️

@streetwizzur: @meierthered: Hey, it's ok to like bad games! (XIII had a neat "it's like you're playing a living comic book feel", but the controls were bad, combat was bad and plot was ba-a-a-ad.)

@dasakamov: It played about as well as most FPS games back in the day that weren't straight up arena shooters like Quake. I remember really enjoying it at the time but a lot of that was thanks to the style. The story I do remember being bad and possibly ending on a cliffhanger..?

I'll never understand why people groan about rogue-likes so much. There are so many bad games.

Bad FPS'. Bad fighting games. Bad open world games. Bad MMO's. Bad RPGs. Bad Battle Royales. Etc, ad infinum.

So why is it that when yet another rogue-like crops up that isn't the next Binding of Isaac, or other top tier genre mate, everyones is all "Boo! Stop making rogue likes! Too many!"

I mean we still get great new ones pretty often. Innovative, different ones too. Dead Cells, Into the Breach, Slay the Spire. All amazing.I

Not every game is good. Most examples of any genre are less then stellar. To be kind. So ignore them and move on, t he goods ones will rise to the top.

Just a pet peeve. Not really directed at the Giant Bomb folks; I think it's a funny bit every time they introduce another one with such chagrin. But still. Same complaint about people who bitch about "yet another pixel game" as if they were all of some ubiquitous quality. Meh. Sorry for the vent.

@dasakamov: I can say after trying to replay it within the last year on the original Xbox that the combat and controls are both quite bad. The plot, man, is like watching the movie Vantage Point but just a little higher on the level of enjoyment and a heavier dose of conspiracy.

@genessee: you get the entire skill tree in 12 hours

Whenever Ben looked at the map, I just wanted this game to be some weird first person perspective of FTL.

Can we agree that Rogue-like is a game which has no meta-progression and a Rogue-lite is a run-based game that has progression?

You know, this looks really cool. But the shooting honestly looks terrible. I don't know if it's what they're going for, but it looks like it plays like Marathon. That's not good a thing, I don't think.

Lots of 2D FPS still hold up, but that's mostly just Doom and Build Engine stuff. I dig the art style, but the shooting just looks rough, lacking in feedback, and dull. The lack of proper death animations doesn't help.

Oh good! Cuz that previous description worried me lol.

@tevor_the_third: Honestly. And if it's not a pure rogue-like without vertical progression, it's an abomination. Some people like these kinds of games; people like Rogue Legacy. There's room for these games. Just because a game has rogue-like elements doesn't mean it has to be a pure rogue-like (or whatever term we're using.

Roguelike isn't a dirty word. Roguelikes are great, roguelites are great. These labels are just being misused and their meaning is diminishing, e.g. here we have a game that is definitely not a roguelike.

*SIGH* Yet another awesome, kick-ass looking roguelike that I'm definitely going to buy, believe is going to be "the one" that actually keeps me invested until credits roll, but I will likely stop playing after 6 or so hours.

Man, sometimes I feel like I'm the guy who tried anchovies on pizza, decided I didn't really like them, but I kind of forget that every fourth pizza, so I still get them and then go "why do I do this? I never finish these pizzas. Why keep doing this to myself?"
I say all that and yet, there's still a not-small part of myself that is thinking right now, "this game DOES look awesome and kick-ass, can't wait to play it!"

@the_nubster said:

I would say that the primary sticking point is that Rogue-likes are always turn-based, while Rogue-lites tend to be real-time. I'd actually argue that something like "80 Days" is a Rogue-like long before I'd say the same about Void Bastards or RAD.

@stuntaneous: 100% agreed. I like both genres and many of the games that blend features of multiple genres together into whole new experiences. Rogue Legacy was a lot of fun, as is Spelunky, FTL, etc. but they're run-based games only tangentially similar to traditional Rogue-likes. I honestly think if the term "run-based" is widely adopted, all the controversy will evaporate.

@dasakamov: meet me by the flagpole

3 o’clock

I really really wish this was a no one lives forever game and THAT FUCKIN BORDER IS ASS.

Devs, vignetting, chromatic aberration, depth of field, film grain, and fake borders are the worst things in video games. Don't do any of those.

@poobumbutt: I know what you mean I've bought probably 10 full prices games as preorders since September of last year and haven't put more than 5 hours into any of them. Still doing the mortal kombat 11 story, still just got the police station in resident evil 2, killed 2 bosses in dmc 5, just cause 4 stopped playing until a patch fixed it, tales of Hesperia and Dragon quest xi I only got past the intros, far cry new dawn and rage 2 I put about 20 hours in ... It almost sounds like I hate video games, but there's just too many and the reason I quit playing anything else is I keep ending up in Odyssey with my girl Kassandra.

This looks pretty good though akin to dead cells in terms of unexpected quality.

Once I found out it was a rougue-like i was out.

This looks nice, thanks GiantBomb.

Oh hey, it's from other suns without the vr and with more cellshading

This looks cool. Thanks for the Quick Look, Ben, Jeff and Jan!

@cuuniyevo: Would you say that Spelunky is a Rogue-lite? It's closer to Rogue in its trappings than 90% of these other "rogue-likes" but it's real-time.

I don't remember struggling with the controls at that time, but in all fairness most games had bad controls in that time frame. And i would even go as far and say the same thing about story/plot, hell today's games suck at trying to make something that resembles a plot.

But at that point in time i did have fun with it, i don't remember much from the story. But the shooty shooty bang bang was fun, i even met many angry Frenchmen playing it online. "Fun" early days of Xbox Live.

@the_nubster: Yes, I'm fine with that label being applied to the genre, I would just prefer "run-based" to avoid confusion. -lite and -like are too similar for many people to keep straight, especially since most people haven't played Rogue or any of the Rogue-likes from the 90's.

The analogy I usually bring up is the term "Doom-likes" versus "shooter". The Uncharted and Far Cry games are shooters, but they obviously aren't Doom-likes.

EDIT: Oh and as an aside, the official description on Steam lists BioShock and System Shock as inspirations.

Rorey drinks the Mio.

@the_nubster said:

Yeah, what else would they be?

Just give me thirtfuckingteen on my Switch!

I was mildly interested by the description on the Bombcast, and the ship gameplay and style looks intriguing, but I am so wholly uninterested in the prospect of playing a roguelike. A shame.

If you got System Shock 2 on steam you get 25% off, hot deal!

Saw this on Steam for the first time this afternoon, said to myself "looks neat, hope GB does a quick look of this at some point"....

my wish is granted!

This kinda Blake Stone ish!

Aliens of gold baby

EDIT: @bumbletoes:YES! me too - lol as can be seen above

Just thought I'd leave this here for those worried about the game being a roguelike...

“The term “roguelike” suggests a few things that aren’t really true of our game, most importantly, the idea that you are going to be replaying the start of the game over and over again. Void Bastards has a very different feel, largely because most of the game progress is persistent (i.e. doesn’t reset when you die).

Every tool and gadget you build is carried over from one client (prisoner) to the next so the game feels a lot more like System Shock 2 or BioShock, both of which had respawning systems that meant you largely didn’t lose progress when you died. It’s also entirely possible to play through Void Bastards without dying at all. In fact, that’s another achievement that we should add to the game!”

@the_nubster: We could, if "rogue-lite" weren't an awful term to begin with.

I bought this game on steam after I watched the quick look, and I have to say... It's pretty darn fun, plus it runs great on my Macbook Pro.