... to you
ZeroRanger dev team System Erasure's sophomore outing Void Stranger is - to me - one of the best games i can think of to come outta this year, and it's frustratingly difficult to talk about this funny tile puzzle game without giving its secrets away on some end. this post is my excuse to get some of that out without burying it behind increasingly esoteric spoiler tiers.
i feel like this game is best gone into not fully knowing the cards it holds, but at least having enough expectations to know what you're getting into. it has so, so much to love buried within if you're willing to stick it through.
to this end, here's some things to go in knowing for various types of people you might be! some structural spoilers if you really do want to go in totally blind, but i keep away from actually directly talking plot and mechanics.
... for people who played ZeroRanger
if you liked ZeroRanger's slowly unfurling bigger-picture story, if you liked its pride to wear its inspirations on its sleeve but not simply settle for copying them, and ESPECIALLY if you liked its spirit of learning from your failures and treating a loss as a lesson instead of a punishment (especially especially the way it applied that in the end-game) - as long as you don't mind the change of pace from high-speed shooting game to cautious layer-filled tile puzzler, this game is absolutely for you. void stranger is the zeroranger ethos as it's laid out to you in your first death in that game, as applied to the scale of entire runs of a linear puzzle game.
this game contains a ton of thematic, mechanical, and even more broadly spiritual ties to ZR. if you liked it, and you're willing to give it the time it needs to cook, you might just love this.
... for people who are into tile puzzle games
Void Stranger is absolutely no pushover in the tile puzzle department. while it is nowhere near as mind-bendingly complex as, like, Baba is You gets, it gets so much mileage out of its bevy of mechanics which are introduced to you at a solid pace throughout the game - believe me, even when it seems like the game has finally introduced everything to you it can still surprise you with something that will absolutely shake the game up. there's also a LOT of it - there's many an hour of careful floor tile manipulation waiting for you down here in the Void, far more than first impressions may imply.
limited lives and no undos may seem like a real game killer but trust me it really isn't that bad even if you do end up losing all of them. solutions to puzzles - and bits of element interaction applicable even to situations where you haven't fully remembered those - tend to be memorable enough that you'll find yourself starting to blaze through the places you've already been through, and the game contains numerous back ways to those players devoted enough to experimenting and discovery. (worst comes to worst, you'll probably already be having an image editor open to keep various game notes in - keep screenshots, back off from the game, and solve it in MS Paint if you've worked yourself into a corner mentally!)
... for people looking for the very clear bigger mystery here
there is so, so much of it to dive through, but the game is rather cryptic about the first steps you should be taking to begin discovering all that. ultimately, the best way to start reaching behind the covers is to experiment, threat of lives count be damned. try everything that comes to mind, keep notes, refer to them when something looks suspiciously like it lines up, get a little silly with it. it's always okay to ask for help from someone who has played if you really need a little more direction, though once you start moving on the game's deeper mysteries you'll likely have built up enough momentum to carry you through most of it. everything is hinted at somewhere except for the mysteries that don't matter much to the core experience of the game, but you've got a good chance of knowing what it's talking about already if you give just Trying Whatever Comes To Mind a shot.
and it really, really is worth it to dig down! this game pulls so, so many things that really feel like they could only exist in this way through the medium of Video Game, and it's incredible. there is so much to piece together hiding just outside of the 'main game', and if i can attest to anything it's that piecing together the implications this game contains has devoured my thought processes. just... give it a lot of time and space to get going, alright?
... for girls likers
this game contains so many women and women-adjacent characters. they are all great. this game has a frankly excessive amount of women*. there are only like four or five guys in the whole game. what lengths are YOU willing to go for this? embrace the Void and prove your devotion to find out
System Erasure are two for two on creating incredible and surprisingly deep video games full to the brim with both love for their inspirations and originality in how they're put together, tied up in a way that feels so incredibly video game. Void Stranger isn't going to be for everyone, but if it's for you this will hit the metaphorical baseball out of the park.
hopefully my rambling has given you a clear enough impression of the game to make it more clear as to whether or not this would be your kind of thing - but again, this is ultimately an outlet for me to ramble about this game mostly spoiler-free so um. thanks for reading, haha