People say there's too many substitution ciphers in puzzlers like Fez or Void Stranger or Tunic nowadays. Not me. The tedium of looking up a chart to read one letter is the player's way of expressing their utterly stubborn commitment to the game. Like level-grinding, or 1CCs.
Searching for secrets in Void Stranger is like
I wish there were more standard social media tags for blind playthrough reactions of games. I'd love to see people's Void Stranger posts when they find the onion. *←acting like finding the onion is at all interesting or even remotely close to the high tier of the game's secrets*
Excised cutscene of Gray from Void Stranger getting a panel stuck inside the staff, and having to reach shoulder-deep into the dark orb on the end to retrieve it, only for her arm to get jammed, too, then walking back and forth, shaking it and calling "Uhh… li'l help?" to nobody
Puchi Carat 🤝 Void Stranger
Launching it for the first time and then swiftly posting screenshots of the hot animal woman 12 minutes later
Person who thinks the puzzles in Void Stranger are too hard:
Person who thinks the puzzles in Void Stranger are too inconsistent:
Person who thinks all of stage 4 in ZeroRanger should have been in loop 2: "It just feels like a disappoi
Imagining if Void Stranger's statues had randomised abilities like NetHack potions, and you had to identify them by trying various game actions on them.
Also imagining if Void Stranger had 9 different randomised collectable idols and only one had the locust idols' ability.
Void Stranger spoiler…
V cynlrq vg fbba nsgre eryrnfr naq tbg ng yrnfg 6 raqvatf, naq vg gbbx zr hagvy n jrrx ntb gb ernyvfr gung jura gurl fnl "gur ybaryl barf ner xabjyrqtrnoyr", jung gung zrnaf vf gurl bayl trg havdhr qvnybt vs gurer vf rknpgyl 1 bafperra ng ebbz fgneg.
I JUST PLAYED VOID STRANGER FOR 8 HOURS AND HERE IS THE COMPLETE HAUL OF UNSEEN STUFF I DISCOVERED:
• An onion
"Ten years ago, we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope.
For these defects, and for no other evil, we now are lost and punished just with this:
We have no jobs, no cash, and no hope."
–– VoidStrangerQuotes.com
I'm playing Void Stranger so seriously and intentionally right now. Business is so serious that I am transforming into the BizHawk icon as we speak.
*thinks about what if Void Stranger really was made by Yoko Taro instead of being structurally inspired by his games* So, first of all, Gray's breasts remain exactly the same,
*hears about B3313* Damn, how many floors does Void Stranger even have
*listens to the first 10 seconds of the Void Stranger first area music* Oh, I love Theme Of Eastern Story
Many agree that the toughest Void Stranger puzzle is the one where an ominous statue cryptically asks "what's brown and sticky", requiring you to set the palette to dark orange and then hit it with your stick.
In which Leon surrenders to the zeitgeist and does that template where you label parts of a drink with your mood upon reaching it
Gray is going Strangeo Mode on these puzzles
It really exercises my squinting muscles that Void Stranger has a lot of really elaborate and interesting music tracks but they're all officially named like they're from Donkey Kong Country levels
[B133 - Hard]
This one legitimately, deeply stumped me. It took me a long time to mentally crawl out of just the starting position. By the time I'd finished, all I could think was "wow, this is actually genius". This might possibly be the best puzzle in the entire game.
[B128 - Hard]
This one particular area of the game (B112-B139) definitely has the most strenuous puzzles thus far…… but it also has a scant few where the only response is "but y tho"…
[B121 - Hard]
This is one of what I call "fuse" puzzles involving trap panels and lazy eyes. The tasks of making it to the other side of the room, while also having appropriate material for the "fuse", makes this one pretty fun.
[B119 - Hard]
I honestly despised this puzzle during my first playthrough. What I was missing was taking "the direct approach" in the opening of this solution. A very succinct example of when the game leans on subtle misdirection.
[B107 - Hard]
This one, while simple, is a good demonstration of how the statues and tiles allow Void Stranger puzzles to have two distinct stages, where you're operating in the same room with different restrictions. It basically defines the game's "puzzle identity", so to speak.
[B101 - Hard]
Antti & Eero why
Why is this in the first third of the levels
Explain
[B099 - Hard]
I find this one interesting because while it looks like it could be a huge pain in the caboose, in practice, everything just lines up and it's all straightforward. Like a couple of puzzles in this game, it uses space and tiles kind of deceptively.
[B094 - Hard]
This is one where the whole puzzle is just knowing A) what form allows the switch to be usable at all, and B) how to navigate over to construct it. But, the starting layout does work well to obfuscate both of these tasks.
[B075 - Hard]
This is a certified "fun one". This particular subgenre of pitfall-tile puzzle is strangely few and far between throughout the game - other games would probably make an entire section out of it, exhausting it, and moving on.
[B071 - Hard]
It's not the hardest, the longest, or even the most tedious, but this is the one puzzle in the earlygame I'm most glad to never have to expend cognition on ever again. Even recording this video feels like giving it too many more of my life's waning seconds.
I freaking LOVE slowly realising I'm going to need to use a form that I was sincerely, subconsciously hoping the game would never realise it could force me to do.
This idea is hard to put into words, but: Void Stranger feels like a game that would have had the black and white sesame seeds in it, if Earthbound hadn't thought of them first. None of the other stuff from Earthbound, though, just those two seeds.
The notion of puzzles having a "thesis" is very apparent when playing something like Patrick's Parabox, where it's obvious what idea each particular puzzle is trying to convey. Void Stranger puzzles, being inherently "cruder", are much more capable of misdirection as a result.
Something I've been noticing about Void Stranger puzzles is that, by having two apparent solutions to a certain constraint (e.g. certain statues) it can get a lot of mileage out of making one of the solutions "look wrong", or working against the puzzle's apparent "thesis".
[B052 - Hard]
Presenting one of this game's best works of obfuscation. Everything from how you're supposed to make the final approach to the exit, to what's even supposed to be on the switch, is in need of investigation. If anything, I make this look too easy.
[B050 - Hard]
This one took a little effort. Figuring out A) which direction to extract the switch and door tiles from, and B) most of the traps to the right are entirely unusable, was essential and pretty interesting.
Rubbing my hands together as this videogame starts forcing me to use the five-tile two-wide Conveyor Belt Form (which I assume is named after some kind of slug, or possibly an amoeba)
Little known fact: Void Stranger becomes 30% easier when you set the music volume to 0. This is because the extra mental processing used by your brain's "banger lobe" gets freed up, *tries to summon polygonal Dr. Kawashima but instead summons Arino from the Game Center CX games*
[B038 - Hard] This is the first puzzle thus far that felt legitimately interesting to solve… the single tile left behind at 0:10 is a really nice touch.
Significantly, the repeating inputs for the "Conveyor Belt Form", for single-direction movement through void using 3 tiles, is five inputs long (in this case, ←z←→z), so as a result, such lines get "staggered" in a way that makes them more visually unique.
I'm transcribing the routes in a set of Markdown files, with pasted screenshots. The inputs are four-per-line because I believe it's easier to keep my place this way while keeping adjacent lines from looking too similar – reminiscent of how credit card numbers are divided.
B003 to B027 completed…! This footage was made using only my transcribed input routes, without looking at the screen. [MAJOR PUZZLE SPOILERS]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i86f95PSYj0 (I will not be recording multiple room runthroughs for subsequent areas)
One of my favourite memories of my first playthrough was the surprising pleasure of methodically working through the final set of puzzles, step by step, and I hope to extend this enjoyment to every remaining puzzle – and, in doing so, immolate them.
This is completing the game on essentially maximum difficulty, with the minimum of options. But, with the absence of pressure to find the endings, I'm… looking forward to this.
Here are the conditions of my challenge:
1) NO POWERUPS used in solutions.
2) If I know a room contains a 💎, I *MUST* collect it during the solution.
3) I must write down EVERY step as a series of ←↑→↓z inputs.
4) Everything else is ignorable at my discretion.
…So anyway, I'm going to do another playthrough. In which I'm going to solve each puzzle in every room, AND copiously write down the complete solution. Each room will be solved once more, and then never again.
I'll fill the emptiness in my knowledge. I'll fill every ⬛️ with ⬜️.
Exhaustively traversing the entire game world is – intentionally – tremendously time-consuming, and having to continually re-solve puzzles in order to investigate something can get very demoralising.
Now, the reason why I can't "just" keep playing the game is because of its signature hostility to traversal: every single puzzle must be solved every time you enter it, the difficulty of each puzzle is HIGHLY inconsistent, and your powerups drastically alter the solutions.
I've tried to put the game away, for the past several months, but my lingering attachment keeps tugging at me.
In short, I feel like I'm missing something.
Something………………… NOMINALLY important.
For example, there are at least 4 NPCs I never figured out what to do about, not to mention a bunch of other combinations of optional items and potential easter eggs, as well as a bunch of stuff that I lost track of because they are seemingly only once-per-savefile occurrences.
Because of this, I can't bring myself to indulge in other people's playthroughs and experiences even now.
This wouldn't bother me so much if I wasn't so attached to or appreciative of the game. I guess I feel… what's that word… envy, I suppose.
I've been feeling wistful about Void Stranger… I finished several endings awhile ago, but, even after that many hours, I still feel like I haven't seen the whole game.
Feb 2024: Void Stranger fans all start saying "How bothersome", not because they've exhausted all other memorable quotes from the game, but because their mid-30s back pain kicked in simultaneously
*suddenly imagines if the "enter your brand" screen in Void Stranger was a copy-protection code screen like in LOOM* Oooh
*surrounded by ten Lev statues from Void Stranger* Heh… Don't worry, everyone… I've got this under control…
*swings the staff at the exact moment I realise that nine of them are actually just cardboard cutouts of Lev statues* Oh, now THAT'S a good on–
Instantly inflicting 999 damage by calling Void Stranger "Helltaker for millennials"
No one can say that Void Stranger didn't innovate in the Sokoban-like puzzle genre… it turned auto-saving after each puzzle solve into a downside.
*thinks about how fricked up it is that you can use a tool literally called "Undertale Mod Tool" to mod Void Stranger*
Noelle from Deltarune playing Void Stranger and finding all the wacky easter eggs first try
Noelle from Deltarune playing Void Stranger and thinking too much about Tail's neutral form
*trying to scratch "Elbereth" on a floor tile using the Void Stranger staff* Goddamnit hang on what brand did Tolkien give her again
Void Stranger Kart Racer. No items, but each racer has the staff, and can remove or add tiles from the racetrack, leaving holes to fall through, or creating shortcuts. You could call it Void Racer. The fluffy bat-blob mascot could be Lakitu.
Naljnl, rire fvapr frrvat vg, vg nyjnlf erzvaqf zr bs rcvfbqr 4 bs gur fubj Gur Fgenatr Jbeyq Bs Thearl Fynqr (1960), jurer gur znva punenpgre vf chg ba gevny va n oynpx ibvq sbe gur pevzr bs gur cerivbhf rcvfbqrf orvat gbb zrgngrkghny naq abg shaal.
Rot13 spoilers for a very missable Void Stranger easter egg… Try Your Freaking Luck…
Vs lbh fnirfphz ("dhvgfphz") gb oehgr-sbepr gur chmmyrf, lbh pna trg qrgnvarq naq chg ba gevny, sbe fnirfphzzvat, ol gurfr jnpxl eborq svtherf. Vg'f n shaal zbzrag gung trgf shaavre nsgrejneq.
Everyone shield your eyes – some serious awesome is about to go down. *hits the S.S. Anne truck with the staff from Void Stranger*
"Don't ask me – I just work here!!"
–signature phrase of the talking boulder from Void Stranger
*imagines if system_erasure had been fans of Gradius instead of vertical shmups, and as a result losing a life in Void Stranger took away all your powerups* Hrmmmmmmmmm
Calling all Void Stranger voidheads… So I was thinking, the reason this song is called "Lax Lullaby" has GOT to be because of its similarities to this Nintendo ditty, right? It lines up with a relevant character name, too……
Look, you can't call Void Stranger "the NieR of sokoban-like games" unless it has conlang song lyrics. *someone points out that the song in the game with English lyrics sounds like that if you're not an Anglophone* ……You know what, I'll take it
*Arle voice* MIOENS
Who is this tweet even for
Void Stranger, also known as "OFF for lesbians",
What the Metroidvania elements add to Void Stranger function like that – they change the meaning and relevance of individual puzzles, encouraging the player to look "beyond" them and start seeing them as just paths to a goal, against the traditions of the genre.
The addition of the map screen isn't just to contextualise the levels and add a sense of place and progression – it also wordlessly reveals to the player ideas like "you can just skip specific levels" and "this level opens a shortcut you can use after a Game Over".
I'm reminded, funnily enough, of Super Mario Bros. 3, and how its one "big thing" (which it probably didn't invent but did popularise) was taking the arcade-like platformer and adding an RPG-like map screen with "inventory" and multiple paths, becoming an "adventure-platformer".
Something a few people have noted about Void Stranger is that one of its most striking features is simply presenting a familiar genre in an unfamiliar framework – putting the sokoban-like puzzle genre in a Metroidvania-like framework with powerups and "backtracking".
REALISES VOID STRANGER WILL NEVER BE POPULAR ENOUGH FOR ITS MUSIC TO GET A GIIVASUNNER (← doesn't explain what this word means) AND FEELS A SINGLE TEARDROP OF BLOOD MAKE AN ECHOING SPLASH INSIDE MY LEFT VENTRICLE
More saliently: having a certain density of missable interactions or secrets, or hidden alternative ways to manipulate the game, is really not the domain of any one title, but something any game could potentially aspire to.
OK, sure, there are some very specific Undertale-like ways the different routes' plots "make sense" that even I would point out, but other stuff like the way NPCs work, the NPCs' personalities, and how "runs" work, reminds me a lot more of a Souls-like game or a dungeon RPG.
People keep loosely comparing Void Stranger to Undertale and I don't quite get it. Like, yes, there's missable NPCs and bosses, Easter eggs and multiple endings with fairly obscure routes…
…but, y'know what I think Void Stranger resembles more in those aspects? Elden Ring.
I will say… maybe the most shocking thing about ZeroRanger is how much of Void Stranger you CAN'T see in it.
Like, there are dozens of obvious surface-level features, but the two games' philosophies about narrative design, tone, genre, and player agency are still worlds apart.
Thinking about Void Stranger makes me a little frustrated because it does so much right storytelling-wise that if the actual plot and characters were, like, even just 30% more interesting, then it would be absolutely transcendentally good… So close yet far from perfection…
I'm absolutely convinced there's a fashion design line that goes from the Void Stranger lords ← Asriel Dreemurr ← Ran Yakumo. It's as clear as day.
I love that you can pinpoint multiple features of Void Stranger as evidence that it was made by shmup devs.
Like, you can say, here is your lives, here is "using a continue" and the resulting "bad end", here is "loop 2", here is the ChoRenSha turn-one-item-into-three thing…
*notices no one is talking about Void Stranger* God I wish Void Stranger was more popular *realises this means my mentions would be full of people who found more Easter eggs than me* God I'm glad Void Stranger isn't more popular *notices no one is talking about Void Stranger* God
*after innocently trying something out in Void Stranger* Wow, I can't believe Void Stranger is a software program built exclusively to ruthlessly troll me, the only person on the Internet who has ever purchased it (plus the people who recc'd it to me ig)
First human to die of Void Stranger easter egg FOMO
Void Stranger is… how do I put this… a videogame with every single positive AND negative association in the word "kamige".
Void Stranger also has a tiny fraction of the number of cause-and-effect puzzles of a La Mulana 1 or 2.
You know what a more fitting comparison would be? Cave Story's Sacred Grounds. And even then, Void Stranger's puzzles are much clearer than what that game asked for.
Void Stranger's cause-and-effect puzzles are dramatically more tamed in comparison: the objects that are capable of hidden or edge-case manipulation are limited in number and (usually) visually obvious. Only one or two true "leaps of faith" are ever really asked of you.
The latter category is the true meat of La Mulana: basically every memorably difficult puzzle involves an obscured or invisible cause-and-effect. The game teaches you to scrutinise everything, to consider that any inert object in any room could be revealed as manipulable somehow.
La Mulana puzzles to me fall in two overlapping categories: code puzzles (gather the code, then input it) and cause-and-effect puzzles, where the puzzle is realising, or being told, a relationship between disconnected objects, or an edge case in how an object can be manipulated.
……OK, look, let's extract the elephant from the room here: I think everyone saying Void Stranger is "like La Mulana" is doing it a significant disservice, even though it has plenty of obvious references. Its puzzle design is significantly different and more "regular" than that.
Music opinion: I remain unchanged that the first area's music is the floating cream of the crop, but the 6-minute-long(!) dark jazz music for area six is a decently close second place. Everything else is far below those two.
The Void Stranger soundtrack isn't available to download online, so I used an asset extractor tool to extract the music files.
*leaning back in rocking chair* Feels like the Void is getting Stranger every day…
OK everyone, I got the sixth and most conclusive-feeling ending.
Hmm……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………good videogame.
…………FIFTH ENDING…………
……I can't freaking believe the game really did make you the exact same stuff all over again except with basically one thing different……
FORTUNATELY, this time I actually wrote down solves for an extremely large amount of rooms using a series of arcane diagrams, so the sting isn't too harsh.
Still… current motivation to continue is pretty close to rock bottom.
FINALLY!!! FOURTH ENDING (or possibly the fifth, sixth or seventh) obtained.
Unfortunately… seems like there's at least one more ending that'll require doing a good portion of that stuff all over again :(((((((
By the way… I ACCEPT ALL CHALLENGERS (for specifically Pochi & Nyaa, the exact-opposite-of-a-hit 2003 falling block game by Puyo Puyo designer Moo Niitani, and no other game) !!
I played Pochi & Nyaa on Fightcade today and my mind decided the nyan blocks looked like Void Stranger statues >:((((((((
This game (Void Stranger) has a LOT of very obvious 90s Nintendo visual references, but unlike most such games, it has enough pride and maturity to keep them barely below the line of "cloying". It doesn't make you see them or wait for your applause.
Putting it out here for all to see: if it turns out there's a puzzle where the solution hinges, pun intended, on the fact that opening a chest causes you to face south without moving, I'm gonna be ready for it.
Reaching the point where I'm considering just brute-force-entering things into the name entry screen to see if something will happen : (
AWOOOOO HAD A BRILLIANT IDEA FOR A SOLUTION AND TRIED IT AND IT DIDN'T FRICKING WORK
-- Leon ._. changed their mood to RANCOROUS
Really curious as to whether – as one of my initial presumptions upon seeing this game's main mechanic – the devs really did play specifically Anodyne 1 before designing this game.
Volcanically sighting as I finally give up all pretense of dignity and open the Wikipedia page for "Dante's Inferno" in search of ideas
Feeling very disheartened right now… a huge number of my leads have turned out to not have enough information, or just become seeming dead ends (sometimes literally Game Overs).
That said, I'm still liking the game, and am very astonished it isn't WAY more popular than it is.
Having 72 grasshoppers and still refusing to burn one unnecessarily is this game's 99 Megalixers.
When you retweet yourself
I dunno, I think there's just something inherently dorky about Ars Goetia, even more so than, say, Norse mythology in La Mulana 2 et al. At least mythology has some implicit, often tragic narrative to play off of, whereas Ars Goetia is mostly just a bunch of names and vibes.
I don't know how I feel about this game making its backstory turn out to be more Ars Goetia stuff… I definitely had a "we're doing this again, huh", reaction, but they do vaguely try to make it a bit unique.
THIRD ending found… I also found a fourth """ending""" which doesn't have credits but does return you to the "name entry screen" when you get it, but it's probably just an Easter egg (←clueless)
I managed to get another, different ending!!……… but… it seems The True Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove begins here…
That being said… I will add that the sheer amount of unique one-off cutscene music (along with other aspects of the cutscenes) makes me wonder what on Earth this $10 game's budget really was (compliment).
Music opinions… First area's theme is breathtakingly good, about as great at instilling reverence and awe as both La Mulanas or both Deltarune chapters. However, the subsequent area themes only range from mildly interesting to slightly annoying.
The one big feeling I'm taking away from the story is that, despite all its surprisingly varied cutscenes, it would basically be garbage if the protagonist was a man.
"Leon, I notice that sentence doesn't actually state that it isn't garbage" OK, look right here, YOU,
Adding to the problem (insofar as I can call it that) is that the powerups are extremely inconsistent at how well they make past puzzles easier. In particular, by far the most tedious puzzle type (switches) is usually mostly unaffected by the powerups.
I mean, am I really supposed to just screen-record every solution as I make it, and punch it back in every time?? This goes a bit above and beyond typical puzzle game notetaking.
Really big pain point identified: for a game with a decent amount of backtracking and returning to the start, having to constantly re-solve the late-game rooms is extremely tedious.
Like, some of the rooms' solutions are like 40 moves deep, or otherwise extremely dense.
Rapidly developing a new and never-before-seen game design theory that difficult Metroidvanias like this and La Mulana are "hurt/comfort fic", instantly incinerating all my intellectual credibility.
A bone has been thrown in my direction.
I kind of hate to knock a game that does so much that I like, but the individual room puzzle difficulty is SOOOO all over the place. It feels almost random how long any individual room will take to beat, even long after the normal route's areas.
It is a little funny that this heavily references the classic Zelda animation of fairies restoring you to full health, but because the protagonist is so down-on-their-luck, they have to resort to using grasshoppers instead.
Well, time for some more Void Stranger. *opens Paint Dot Net and starts dragging screenshot after screenshot into it*
Managed to get the normal (??) ending despite having like 15 different leads still unfinished… So much for the low-hanging fruit >_>'''
Found a dungeon area with the ghost from Bubble Bobble. (Thought I was going to say "The ghost from Spelunky"? Hahaha… Make your next move with a scant more hesitation, I think.)
Examining the game's opening a bit more… I do like that the way you choose between the permadeath "difficulty" and the easy "difficulty" (they're not really that, but bear with me) is to simply die to select the latter.
The boss fights are reminding me a lot of the original "MSX" La Mulana… mainly because of how step-by-step the animations are, and, in contrast, how elaborate the sprites are.
I like how, after you get to each of the Shovel Knight-esque dream cutscenes, the game unceremoniously saves and quits, subtly inviting you to end the session there and play again tomorrow. Feels like a very "mindful" thing you'd normally see in a life-sim, or Sword & Sworcery.
https://system-erasure.itch.io/void-stranger – Void Stranger first playthrough thread!!!
Ten minutes in and I'm already hungry to see where this is going.
