I know it’s not the most popular, but I love loot-based progression games. Diablo, Borderlands, Destiny, you get me. Recently, I was able to try a hack-and-slash game called Voin that just released an updated demo as part of the Steam Next Fest, which does something interesting with this theme: it gives you a bunch of powerful items from the start, but they are corrupted and if you equip them, the action becomes more difficult. To use them normally, you have to purify them from your base or shelter first.
That idea is more typical of extraction games. Some of them have designated areas on the map for this task, and I remember in The Division 1 it simply asked you to leave the contaminated area alive. How does Voin do it? Simple: you look up and, if you are under open sky, you press E to return from the mission. You need to have spent some time killing monsters first, so it’s as simple as going back after each chest you open. But that’s the idea.
Sure, the “purify before use” concept is quite common; but looking up, not so much. It’s not a criticism, mind you: for a designer, it’s most logical to organize the game environment around the idea that the end user will see it on a more horizontal than vertical monitor. So desktop action almost always focuses on what’s in front of you (or behind you) rather than above or below. It’s normal: space is better utilized that way.
Look up and ask to go back home. A way to save clicks and make the most of space.
But that means the Y axis is often underutilized: how many action games do you know where it’s important to aim down or up? I doubt there are many. Maybe Helldivers or Titanfall, because of looking where certain supplies will fall; but it’s not the norm. And that means there’s still physical space to do things and experiment with new mechanics and possibilities. In this case, it’s just about returning to the shelter; but maybe others have more interesting initiatives in mind.
How is Voin?
Although I found the idea of looking up to return to your lair interesting, the truth is that it’s just a tiny detail. I’m enjoying many things about Voin: the artistic section is one of them, for example, with some colossal structures aligned with the style of the Polish artist Beksiński. The combat system, on the other hand, seems interesting because it twists what we are all accustomed to seeing in first-person melee combat (light and charged attacks, for example).
All tied to itemization: all the rings, amulets, and earrings have at least one or two stackable effects that add several layers of depth to what happens in the background during the action; and ultimately determine how you can refresh certain abilities or make them more effective than usual. It sounds typical on paper, but in practice, after just 20 minutes of play (before finishing the tutorial), you could be shooting lightning bolts from a flaming hammer that kills almost any enemy in one hit.
It’s almost the progress you would expect after hours of basically any other game built around melee combat. The only downside, again, is the corruption issue: until you reach the central menu to clean whatever you have obtained, everything is considered cursed and equipping it causes cumulative weakening effects. You become more vulnerable every few seconds and even the interface starts to display strange effects that can distract you in combat. But nothing stops you from playing like that, if you want.
Even common items are full of effects.
At a certain point, I made the bad decision to equip cursed items in all equipment slots before returning, and while I was still a kind of speed demon like Ghostrunner, the game ended up tearing the interface to shreds and every enemy became a problem for me. So I found it much better to progress with what I had on. If you die, by the way, it’s not the end of the world: a beacon appears in the sky pointing to where you died, and you can go there to pick up your stuff.
I think Voin is quite well on track, although to give some criticism, I’d say it urgently needs help to better orient myself: whether it’s a compass, a minimap, or a waypoint. I say this because the maps are open and it’s difficult to orient sometimes, especially when it comes to remembering which places you have already visited or which direction you came from. But it’s just an accessibility issue that will probably be corrected over time.
The Steam page does not reveal a release window, which is quite normal because it only has one developer. Still, it’s pretty good and you can try its demo right now.
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