Playing this game is a process of gradually tuning your mind to its frequency like a radio station, learning the languages it speaks as well as the gaps in what it says, until it feels like your whole body is resonating in harmony with it. It's a constant dance between fascinations: as soon as your mind is wholly absorbed with the first-order tile puzzles, the game zooms out and gets you thinking about the world it takes place in. The moment you start to really dig into the lore, it crashes back in close and reminds you that it's really about the deeply personal love and loss of each of the characters. And to see more of those characters, of course, you must do more sokoban.
It's hard to talk in detail about the game without spoilers, but I'll say this: I filled four pages with notes about this game, spilling over into a spreadsheet, a screenshot folder, and a large collection of video recordings. The expertise with which its layered puzzles are assembled is extraordinary, hitting a perfect difficulty point where you feel like a genius for each solve but (almost) everything feels like it's using the same design language that you can become fluent with. It stands with Riven as one of the best puzzle games I've ever played.
But that's not even the thing I'll remember most about Void Stranger. What will stay with me long after I forget the trick to B213 or the best way to route bulls is the love the characters hold for one another and the fucked up beautiful lengths they'll go to enact it. In the end, the heart of the game is summed up in the words uttered by Eus's statue... which I'll let you discover for yourself.
