Voices of the Void is a Masterclass in Terror and Tension
- gatesannai1
- Oct 17
- 3 min read
We get loosey-goosey with Gothic as a genre but VotV is a Gothic sorry
Lately I’ve been entrenched in an indie game quickly gaining popularity called Voices of the Void (VotV), developed by mrdrnose. While still in pre-alpha phase (meaning an early, early version of the game), VotV is already, in my opinion, a masterclass of utilizing terror and tension.
The gist of the game is that you’re a scientist working in a remote research base where you collect and analyze signals from space. There’s an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop here where you identify the signal, download it, listen to it, and then can send it through processing to improve its quality. Once this is done, you pack the drive into a box and send it off into the world via drone. You also have to perform maintenance on your servers, your generator, and the satellites themselves.
It doesn’t sound scary, but there’s something about the trash-filled hallways of your base, the silence of your surroundings, and your total lack of companionship that gives off this eerie, unsettling feeling. While at the beginning there’s no real reason to believe I was being watched, I kept looking over my shoulder, didn’t I?
The reason VotV works so well is that it utilizes techniques that grate at our instinctual fears—the same sort of techniques that are often found in classic gothic literature, including:
1. Isolation
2. The unknown
3. An atmospheric setting
4. The supernatural – things we cannot explain
Isolation
This one is pretty obvious from the get-go. Other than the occasional email from our supervisors, the player doesn’t interact with a single other person. The closest thing we get to companionship is the plushie that we bring in our suitcase with us, and the drone that drops off supplies and picks up our finished signals.
But what makes the isolation worse is the evidence of what there once was. Throughout the base you find empty beer bottles and coffee cups and bunks stripped of their bedding and a fun communal shower. This base was built for an entire group of people—so what happened, and why are we working alone?
Signs of life that are no longer present immediately signal to us to be suspicious, to be afraid.
The Unknown
The backstory I gave you about the scientist came directly from the VotV site. You are thrown into this game standing just beyond the gate of the park with absolutely no information. When you do make it to the base, all you have to go off of is an email that sort of describes what your task is. Everything else you have to figure out and discover on your own. There’s no hints as to what you might experience, no notes left behind that slowly uncover what happened, nothing to guide your expectations. It’s complete unknown.
An Atmospheric Setting
An abandoned dirty research base in the middle of what is otherwise a lovely park is the perfect dissonance to maximize that uncomfortable feeling. Logically, you are safer inside—even though inside looks and feels bad. And logically, you’re exposed and vulnerable outside—even though outside looks really nice. This leaves the player never quite feeling safe or comfortable, no matter where they are.
We see this all the time in classic gothic lit. The grand mansion that’s expensive and beautiful, but the floorboards creak and there’s rooms filled with dust, and we’re pretty sure our host is a vampire, etc.
The Supernatural
There’s plenty, plenty that goes on in VotV that cannot be explained. The unexplainable is one of the core drivers in how horror incites us to fear. What we don’t understand, we feel threatened by. I can’t say more about the unexplainable in VotV without getting into spoiler territory, but let’s just say that this game will have you doubt every single one of your instincts.
(The first time I woke up to the message, “I can’t sleep now; I sense something” I actually considered turning off the game).
Comments