Draft:Void Stranger

Void Stranger is a 2023 sokoban-style puzzle video game created by independent Finnish developer System Erasure. Players control a character descending to the bottom of a dungeon while solving puzzles to progress. The game features layered secrets and reveals that gradually change the gameplay.

The game was developed as a two-man collaboration between Eero Lahtinen and Antti Ukkola after completing their first game ZeroRanger in 2018 and it was inspired by a variety of mostly Japanese series and games. The game had a largely positive reception.

Gameplay
Void Stranger is a two-dimensional sokoban-style dungeon crawler puzzle video game with game boy-like monochromatic color palette and chiptune sounds. Players assume the role of a lone character who, after falling to the first floor of a dungeon, must make their way to its bottom. The dungeon has over 200 tile- and turn-based levels with varying sokoban-style puzzles that the player must solve to advance, with their main tool being a magical staff-like device that can rearrange the floor tiles of a level. Falling down or getting hit by an enemy causes the player character to lose a life, and losing all lives ends the run, forcing the player to start over. Extra lives, represented in the game as locust idols, can be found in treasure chests across the dungeon.

The initially simple-seeming gameplay gets more complex as the game progresses and the player discovers new mechanics and secrets hidden in the levels.

Development and release
Void Stranger was created by independent Finnish video game developer System Erasure, a collaboration between Eero Lahtinen and Antti Ukkola. Void Stranger is the second game by the studio, which was founded in 2008 and published its first title, ZeroRanger, in 2018. Development started in 2019 and the game was publicly revealed in October 2020. It was released for Windows via Steam on 1 September 2023.

The development of the game was started by Ukkola, who was the game's main programmer and the sole artist and writer, while Lahtinen still continued to update ZeroRanger after its launch. After some trial-and-error while exploring the GameMaker engine he discovered what would become the main gameplay mechanic of the game. He then chose a monochromatic color palette for its simplicity and practicality, and to keep the workload more manageable. The game's music, composed by Lahtinen, was designed with the game's puzzle genre in mind so that the player would not grow too irritated listening to the same song when stuck in a puzzle.

The game was influenced by a variety of mainly Japanese series and games, with Antti Ukkola crediting cyberpunk series Battle Angel Alita, dark fantasy mangas Berserk and Made in Abyss, the Finnish classic Moomins, and the 1991 roguelike Cave Noire as his main inspirations.

Reception
The game had a largely positive reception, with critics directing praise toward

Jordan Helm of Hardcore Gamer found the game's puzzles and unforgiving mechanics to be "not an easy endeavor", but notheless very rewarding. For him, however, the main appeals of the game were the layered reveals and secrets that gradually change the initially innocent-seeming gameplay, comparing one "incredible rug-pull" in particular to the main reveal of the 2016 puzzle game The Witness.

Dominic Tarason writing for the PC Gamer ...

Dia Lacina of Paste ...