kuraine

a pixelated entity

  • she/her

idk some girl or cat or panda that does music


🎹 radical dreamland (studio)
radicaldream.land/
☁️ soundcloud
soundcloud.com/lena-raine
😇 ANOTHEREAL (new dev blog home)
blog.radicaldream.land/blog/?q=ANOTHEREAL
🔸 Dispatch from the Radical Dreamland
blog.radicaldream.land/

The quote in the title has been stuck in my head ever since completing the first e*****. It perfectly encapsulates so many things: At a base level, the excruciating difficulty of persevering against the puzzle rooms in pursuit of filling in the greater picture. At a story level, a conflict that has yet to fully form by the time you first see this text. At an existential level, that's life baby.

The synergy between all things is what sets Void Stranger apart for me. You can feel all five years of development between two friends who love to push each other creatively. It's a game where there is an immense quantity of things, and yet nothing is chaff. It is all relevant. It all means something. Nothing you try in pursuit of these connections is futile.

By writing about it I want to outline my experience playing the game & how I came across these connections, the manic obsession with filling in all the squares, and where I am now that it's all uncovered.

And before we continue, yes I will be spoiling basically the entire game. So please don't read further unless you A) have already completed what you know to be everything, B) don't care about spoilers and simply want to come along with me on the journey.

Let's go!


Part 1 - Blank Slate

Discovery is at the core of Void Stranger. From the moment you boot the game, you're treated to some extremely vivid imagery of a star crashing down into Earth, and then a solitary stranger coming across a perfectly square hole in the ground. She jumps and lands in B001. We're descending. On B002 she comes across a large chest & a scepter that provides the core mechanic: removing blocks & placing them into voids. We also become locked into the grid. Something is wrong.

Now let's back up a moment before we continue. For those in the crowd who know how the game works: I went in, on launch, 100% unknowing of anything about the game other than being excited for the next game by the creators of Zero Ranger & that it was a sokoban. Sokoban, traditionally, means pushing blocks around. B002 contains no 'blocks'. It is simply a room, and a void to cross. I don't know what the game's mechanics are, so I move to the ledge in the hopes that maybe a way to cross will reveal itself.

I fall in.

So here I am, one screen deep, being welcomed by a cheeky imp asking me if I want to continue. Now, at the time, I feel like: aha, this is the intended thing to do. You are at an impossible crossing, fall in, and this lil thing comes in to explain the mechanics. Only that doesn't happen, and I end up eating a fruit that brings me back to life. I don't notice the 'VOID' status until much later. I've yet to collect a locust idol. I don't know what anything does.

Once I'm back, I press A and discover the block displacement mechanic. It develops from there. On B003 I find my first locust idol. I don't know what they're for, because now any time I fall, I simply respawn. As far as I'm aware, these are just collectables. A currency?

In any other game, this would be 'wrong'. This would be considered a failure of the game to teach me its mechanics. But Void Stranger assumes nothing of you, and gives you a purposely cryptic experience no matter how you begin your engagement with it.

So my journey continues: deeper and deeper into the void. I notice various things that seem curious, but I'm still in an exploratory phase. As I descend, I take sparse notes in my journal. It hasn't expanded to the degree it will later.

When I first started, I made it to about 2 of the story trees before taking a long pause. I thought I wasn't smart enough to make enough of a dent in the game. But the more I saw people talking about it, the more determined I felt to push through and see what was at the bottom.

And so I eventually made it.

The Voided ending is one of the most unsettling and haunting things I've played in a game in some time, let alone this year. The music coming in. The vocals & lyrics replacing the UI. The impossible puzzles. The sudden shifts on the beat. I get chills thinking about it still. It's the perfect end to what you think is the end. And yet... it's barely started.

Part 2 - Determination

Upon starting my second loop, I finally know what locusts are for. I know what the deal is when you lose them all. I'm determined to make it through, again, without losing myself to the void. I take more notes. I dedicate an entire page in my journal to diagramming every single mural I come across, with a backup screenshot. For the first time, I see the 'X' marks that allow you to collect crystals to unlock memories. I watch the story again, and pick up one stray tree I had missed on my first go. Floor by floor, more notes:

B020 - Weird guy...
B054 - White light - two white clad figures
B137 - Is this the 6x6 grid?? Ah!!
B212 - Melon by exit??
B224 - X near HP??

By the time I've made my descent past the last point of no return, I'm prepared. The story wraps me up in its curiosities: the Void Lords are introduced. I'm sunk in, there's no coming back from this now. I need to know what happens.

On floor 228, I'm standing on a giant 'Z' made out of floor tiles. That's sort of when it struck me how synergistic the game is. If a room is made of blocks, and its blocks are made of pixels, then how far does the resolution go? As you descend, the glyphs paired with each descending letter reveals a cypher. As I draw them in my dot pad, I realize that they're in a 3x3 grid. And not only are they a cypher for an alphabet, they're also a form of counting. Because each symbol has an 'anchor' block in the top left, each subsequent character builds a pattern. Middle, right, middle+right, left, left+middle, left+right, left+middle+right, nothing. A new block is added on the 2nd row. The pattern repeats. The middle block shifts. Pattern repeats. Both positions are used, and the pattern repeats. Ostensibly you could keep repeating this beyond the 26 letters of the alphabet, but that's all we've got.

But then I look at my screenshots of the murals from earlier in the run & begin to realize that the block interiors contain these cyphers. Before I've even finished my run, I've begun trying to translate the murals:

Mural 01 - "IO EY ERMAN NMYOM AR SL"

It doesn't add up. I feel a little defeated. But I press on. I'm still standing on an 'A' and need to finish my descent. I feel like I've left too many things unexplored, that a 2nd run through the game needed to feel more complete. But I'm at the end of the road, and all there's left to do is face...

A completely empty room.

It's the freedom of this room that lets me make another key revelation in understanding how the world works: the UI is also made of blocks. I begin to comprehend the meaning of 'DIS'. I start picking everything up. I crash the game by picking up my rod (awesome). I contemplate swapping numbers around but don't, since I've come so far. I pick up the tile defining that I'm in the dungeon--

Another, even more empty space. I write this down as the Null Space. There's sounds, but I pursue them only as much as I can. It's a curiosity, but one I can't solve yet. A terrifying beast crashes my game & returns me to the empty room.

I take a leap of faith, and am put on trial. The ramifications of the story at this point is heartbreaking. The amount of restraint by the writing to give you just enough information to pick up on the details by talking around them. A choice is made, and then credits roll for the first time.

At this point, the memories I've unlocked & the reality check that the game hasn't concluded begin to collide. I'm freaking out as the definition of what I thought the world was clashes with a sudden time skip into a modern setting and a new protagonist: returning home and estranged. There's small hints as to what has happened, but it's easy to connect the dots. But, because the game isn't over, it isn't long before our new heroine finds herself confronted with a perfectly square hole, and the entrance to--once again-- B001.

When I realize that the new loop is not a loop at all, and in fact a continuation--an extremely difficult perversion of the levels I already knew--my breath begins to leave me. Here I was thinking I knew the shape of the game, only to be confronted with the knowledge that I hadn't even seen its true form. (As a different and equally fantastic game would say: it's not a loop, it's a spiral.) This is true of a lot of things with Void Stranger, and where the synergy between gameplay & story takes root again. We are introduced to characters, get to know them, and yet we don't even know the slightest hint at what their shape truly is.

In this new dungeon, in a time before uncovering any more secrets, I have no idea what form the labyrinth will take. But it gives me enough to begin pursuing it.

Part 3 - She's Starting to Believe

In my notes, I begin to theorize: in Lillie's house's living room is a book opened to a page about 'Beelzebub'. I know a character named 'Bee'. That's interesting. Write that down.

After deciding that a 'hard mode' run is too much for me to comprehend at this point, I make the executive decision to start all over again with Gray. It's a decision that immediately pays off, since it's the first time I've returned to the 'Brand' entry screen, and new special emblems are unlocked: 'Infinity' and 'Lillie', allowing a return to that cursed set of levels if I choose to. 'Infinity' is fun and lets me experiment on Loop 3. It's time to uncover some secrets.

I have every mural's brand written down in my journal. I enter them one by one, each of them telling me to piss off in a specific voice. That's interesting. Write it down.

I enter the dungeon with a purpose: find a 6x6 room. I'd already marked one down on B137, but I find one sooner: B023. Since the developers likely knew that this would be the easiest one to uncover first, it simply requires removing the stairs to complete. That's knowledge. I tumble in, and the first of many secret truths of the space begins to unravel.

My discoveries come rapid-fire as I press on in my 3rd loop:

  • Cube, lets me talk to rocks. Eggs?? The rocks are extremely knowledgeable about the lore of this space. I learn more Lord names: Add, Tan, Lev, Cif...
  • I meet Tail, who tells me a story about betrayal. I had met her on my 2nd loop, but the tale holds more weight as I learn the shape of this space.
  • A rock tells me about the tail of the traitor defining their Brand. I begin to screenshot every single screen that has a tail on it.
  • I miss this on my 3rd loop but pick it up on my 4th: Wings, which let me be more nimble and traverse gaps to provide simpler and more expedient solutions on subsequent passes through the floors.
  • The Cube begins to translate murals for me, and I learn that the letters are in fact read up to down, right to left. My previously-notated jumble becomes 'ONLY A MEMORY REMAINS'. I translate the rest of the murals before the Cube does it for me, because I feel like being clever. But this gives me even more context to the space.

'ONLY A CRAVING REMAINS'.
'ONLY GNAWING RAGE REMAINS'.
'ONLY A ENVY REMAINS'.
'ONLY FEEBLE REMAINS'.

The murals and rocks tell me a story of the Lords, and I begin to research. Eventually, I find a list of biblical demons that contains 'Beelzebub' and all the rest I would eventually piece together. 'Abaddon'. 'Satan'. 'Leviathan'. 'Lucifer'. Later on, I would find a weird little grub of a man saying the phrase 'Pape Dis, pape Dis aleppe" -- researching it brings me to Dante's Inferno (whose original phrase replaces 'Dis' with 'Satàn'), and I read a summary that reminds me of 'Dis' -- 'Dis Pater', Pluto, Roman god of the underworld. It is the entity passing judgment, and whose name shows up when you remove the UI: "DIS OS".

At this point, even the lore becomes a puzzle for me to assemble. Perhaps for my own entertainment, but no matter what lead I follow, something comes of it.

On finding the 3rd item within the Lord Brand rooms, a new shape of how the game functions reveals itself: boss battles.

In what is an incredible twist on both the turn-based rogue nature of the game & its inspirations from Zelda, the fight here is super satisfying to puzzle out. And the reward: the Sword you use to defeat them, completely changes the verbs of engagement once again.

Armed with all 3 items & their respective Brands promising to let me take these into a new hard mode attempt, I feel emboldened to persevere.

Part 4 - The True Form of Things

Lillie's version of the dungeon is likely where the sticking point will be for the majority of players. I figured out a lot of levels, but at this point I have to give credit to the amazing Steam Community guides that are so multilayered in their attempts to prevent you from spoiling yourself on the greater mysteries of the game. I would not have beaten Lillie's route without having some assistance from the individual room clear guides to give me a little push when I needed a hint. Don't feel bad about using them, if what you want to solve is the greater whole rather than individual levels. There's plenty there without succumbing to agony.

But like anything, relying on help too much does dull your senses. And there was even more to come that would challenge mine in a way that I was determined to solve myself.

I didn't touch on Gray's initial story, but it is one that feels unresolved even at its (first) conclusion. Through resting at the birch trees, you learn that Gray is pursuing Lily. Their relationship is complicated, consisting of maternal love, but also romantic affection. As Gray takes over for Lily's deceased mother in the role of keeping her safe, they are embroiled in the machinations of a warrior king that would use the powers of the Void to take Lily in marriage & sacrifice the kingdom in the name of power. But Lily makes her own deal with the Void Lords to trade herself for Gray's safety. And it's with this knowledge and struggle that Gray pursues her to the depths of the Void. Yet upon reaching her, it is revealed that there are in fact two souls within Lily's body. The details are left unsaid, but Gray makes her choice, with the knowledge that she can never return.

(There are many nuanced takes on why she chooses what she does, whether it's some pro life thing or just her personal intuition. I could write a whole post about this alone, but my general feeling is that she chooses the child because an infant alone in the Void has no chance, but Lily continuing to exist there gives her hope of rescue even if Gray cannot return herself.)

And yet the result of that is now told in these new sets of trees. Raised by Gray in modern Finland, Lillie is persuaded at every turn to mirror the one that Gray lost: her mother, still lost in the Void. Her name is the same, her appearance is the same, yet she is her own person. And as she grows up, her own woman. Gray forms a bond with a woman named Freya & Lillie with her daughter Sonia, who support each other despite falling out. Gray eventually passes away, possibly from breast cancer (as alluded to w/ Lillie's ribbon worn later on), leaving Lillie alone to pick up the pieces. But through the connection with Freya, and her journey into the Void, she finally finds some closure with the woman who raised her.

And despite all that, the shape of the game continues to grow.

Part 5 - Filling in the Squares

A feeling I can't possibly convey in a text retelling of the game is how incredibly hype it is every single time a new dimension of the game is revealed. You think it's over, right? Lillie gets her resolution, finds her mom, continues her life, only to have the perspective forcibly removed & placed into the greater narrative:

At this point it's made 100% clear that this is no longer just a story about Gray & the women named Lilith. It's a story about the Void, and the Void Lords themselves.

And what better way to solidify this by interrupting the credits, pulling focus to a character you didn't know much about before, and suddenly making them the protagonist. That's right, it's time for Void Stranger -Cif-

Because it backtracks the difficulty to the original floor designs, being suddenly put into the shoes of a Void Lord feels like an incredible power trip. You automatically have all 3 burdens (if you didn't already), letting you completely breeze through the early puzzles. Each previously-incomprehensible element of the Void becomes a known quantity: Add carved these murals. Bee left notes in chests, like you know they do. The birch trees have names: lotus-eater machines. And through their search for Bee, you find the stink of a greater plot: a great civil war of the Void Lords, its fallout, and the questions that remain. Where is Add? Why is one of the betrayers, thought dead, still around and kicking?

While Cif's journey is ultimately a personal one to retrieve their friend, it fills in pieces of the greater narrative puzzle that lets you understand what it all means, and what the 'final run' must consist of. I really respect the game letting you create your own solution to this larger puzzle: what the pantheon of the Void is & their individual and intersecting stories, what you need to create the path forward, and how use that newfound power to do so. It sees all the hardships you've been through in uncovering all 3 routes, viewing their stories, and trusts you to bring it all to a close.

Part 6 - The Final Run

Let's bring it all together. To obtain the 'true end', the player needs these knowledge & tools required to see it all through:

  • Obtain all 3 burdens through solving mural brand puzzles.
  • Solve the riddle of Eus' brand by taking screenshots of every single puzzle room that contains part of Tail's tail, pasting them into image editing software to arrange them in a way that lets you finish the full brand & enter it into the room.
  • Use the knowledge gained to unblock the way to kill Tail.
  • Know you just gotta push Mon into a pit. You gotta.
  • Kill Gor with the sword, which is a bit of a freebie.
  • Know how to go back to the very start again.
  • Know how to swap numbers in the UI to get to B000.
  • Learn how the new Super Rod functions.
  • Travel all the way back to the end (optionally using all the shortcuts you've learned).
  • Figure out how to completely wipe a room of blocks before falling.
  • Put all 3 burdens to use by listening to the rock to find the order to kill enemies, use the wings to reach & kill them in order with the sword.
  • Enter the true final area & LEARN EVEN MORE NEW MECHANICS.
  • Do absolutely unhinged shit including changing things in the settings menu & using the UI itself to solve puzzles.
  • Know the identities of every Void Lord, what statues correspond to them, and in what order they appear in the Void.

It is everything you have ever learned in the game, in what is possibly the coolest final test of your knowledge and brainpower in any puzzle game I've played.

And there's still 3 bosses left:

One which tests the limits of your ability to deal with turn-based zelda fights.

One which transcends the limits of the grid to become a fully real-time battle that can be fought in a battle that if played "for real" is one of the most ridiculous things. Luckily there's a secret way to win that is not actually super difficult if you figure it out.

And then, in the final confrontation... System Erasure pulls the card I was eagerly waiting for them to do the whole time, and brings it back to bullet hell.

Again: the sheer joy of finding out that the game pushes beyond your expectations into something new, when following the final confrontation, the game becomes a straight-ahead shmup for its final encounter & conclusion that mirrors the true end of their first game in an extremely meaningful way if you manage to spend your one chance to see it through.

Part 7 - An End

The final confrontation and its ending are something that's harder to state outright than the story of its earthly protagonists. It's one tied up in the large puzzle box of its narrative, world building, and the cosmic trauma of the Void's inhabitants. It's one where someone born to jealousy can't see past what they don't have, blind to what they've been given in lieu of it all. Lev is a fascinating villain in the span of their development at the end of the story, and the connection that Gray and Add pursue in spite of their chaotic plotting is one that leads back into the core conceit of the game.

We have no hope and yet we live in longing.

When you've completed the game, there is one more little nugget left to uncover. A final brand, roughly the logo of System Erasure themselves. True enough, when you form it & drop down, you enter one final area. Ebbo: the game's artist, programmer & lead designer, takes the form of a character named Erasure, to walk you through a small gallery of sketches, prototypes and unused art, full of anecdotes to bring you into the process of having made the game.

At the final screen, in one last little secret, you can dive into the eclipse: the one time in which the Void Lords can pass through the brane into reality. In here, there is one final glimpse at Earth from space, and a message from Ebbo:

I often wonder what kind of future awaits us.
As our world grows older...
Everything feels less and less stable.
Despite being more connected than ever before...
We can no longer reach each other, even when we desperately wish to be heard, to be understood.
I've struggled a lot with this feeling.
Feeling like my work is meaningless.
Maybe, just maybe...
The fact that you made it this far means you feel the same longing as I do.
Can you hear me now?

Part 8 - Afterword

Void Stranger is one of those things that comes super rarely and just grabs me by the collar into the depths of its world and doesn't let go. If you're one of the people who checked this post out without having played the game: even knowing all of what I've written here, I still highly recommend playing it yourself. It is a truly experiential game, and even though I've spoiled a lot, there's so many things to uncover and see & hear for yourself.

The game is here on itch & gives you a steam code, so there's really no reason not to support the developers directly:

You can also find the soundtrack on bandcamp. Only the first 21 tracks are visible to avoid spoilers, so you can get a sneak peek at what the game has to offer...and then listen to all 70 tracks on the full OST after you've devoured everything.

I also highly recommend checking out System Erasure's first game, Zero Ranger. It's the product of 10 years of the development duo finding their feet, figuring out how they wanted to make games, and completely nailing it on every front. It's legit one of my favorite shmups of all time, and combined with Void Stranger makes me so excited for anything new they'll put out in the future.

Thanks for reading all of this. I know it's a lot. But hopefully it's a nice chronicle of my time with the game & conveys what it means to me.


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in reply to @kuraine's post:

This was an extremely lovely read; it really put words to a lot of the emotions I felt playing this game - thank you for writing it! Void Stranger felt so creative on many levels - mechanical design, narrative & narrative design, audio and visual direction... And it wraps them all together so well, all while constantly playing with ideas I don't think I've ever seen before. It's really cool to see other people connect with it in same and different ways, and it's exciting to imagine the work it might inspire in the future.

i didnt think it was possible to have hype for a post but not only did i have it but it paid off. system erasure as a whole is probably one of the most exciting things ive seen in indie in a while, and it warms my heart to unbelievable levels to see a surge in popularity for void stranger

(rot13 spoilers)
Lbh qba'g arrq gb chfu Zba sbe gur gehr raqvat. Gurl'er nyjnlf pbafvqrerq qrnq. Fbzrubj gurl sbhaq n jnl gb sbby gur flfgrz vagb nyjnlf pbafvqrevat gurz gb or qrnq. Vg cebonoyl unf fbzrguvat gb qb jvgu gur frny va gurve oenaq ebbz orvat tbar be znlor gur punez gurl jrne ba gurve urnq.

This is a wonderful writeup of my favorite game of the year (decade?). Thank you for putting it all together like this! A couple little things I wanted to ask/mention:

• Regarding the music: One little detail I'm still thinking about is (rot13) nyy gur zhfvp vf cvgpu-fuvsgrq qbja fyvtugyl ba n Pvs eha. V jbaqre jung gung zrnaf?
• I thought I was done with the game when I got to the point you did, but (rot13 - might be a spoiler based on what you've mentioned!) unir lbh vachg gur oenaq gung haybpxf 0fgEnatre? Lbh trg vg sbe tbvat guebhtu gur rpyvcfr va gur qri ebbz. V'z abg fher jung yvrf orlbaq gung, ohg V'ir orra cenpgvpvat vg sbe ubhef naq V xabj gurer'f nofbyhgryl zber gb or sbhaq gurer...

After going deep on Void Stranger and then going back and getting the true ending in Zero Ranger, I'm convinced System Erasure is making some of the most worthwhile and ambitious games I've ever seen. They still seem relatively unknown outside certain circles, but I hope they're getting what they need to keep doing what they want to do.

TIL that "barf" has a ROT-13 twin. I used to know a couple others but forgot.

So as to not just make this comment about barf, thank you for this wonderful write-up. The sort of thing I would want to write about it but I'm glad someone much better at writing, uh, wrote.

Lovely write-up! A game like this deserves to be told in a way that ties in with your experience playing it (and discovering its secrets) and you nail it here. System Erasure’s got some really good gamedev alchemy going on and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next!

One thing to note with the letters and the 3x3 grid, in case you didn't know: It's ASCII with a couple of the bits swapped around! I instantly realized it when I rewatched the trailer after linking it to a friend, and I ended up figuring it out before I found the key!