#full void

Full Void is a dark Sci-Fi pixel art cinematic platforming adventure set in a dystopian future where humanity is enslaved by a rogue AI!

First, the filesize.

45.95 MB, in this computer economy? That's a GIF. That's chump JPGs. The great granddaddy of the genre, Another World, requires a whopping 841.71 MB of space. You might think Full Void is a tiny lil game if that's all the space it needs, but it's a fully realized cinematic platformer with myriad environments, cutscenes, fluid animations, physics, voxels/3D images?!, game mechanics, music, and on and on. It's a whole game squeezed into less than 50 MB. The developer has discussed how they made their own custom engine in C programming language, and that checks out in spades. They're getting deep into the guts of every machine that runs it and really making the most efficient little game they can without wasting processing power on the many layers of abstraction typically foisted upon games by modern engines. Minimal bloat, maximum art.

Then there's the way they designed their movement.

I completely missed this during my playthrough, but a review I read later pointed out that everything on the screen moves along a grid. The bot programming sequences, like the one above, make it crystal clear, but I just didn't connect the grid movement mini game with the free movement in the scenes.

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That character is fluidly moving through the space but the game is always ensuring that the character moves from one grid space to the next. This also means that every room is built around this grid, and every moment, such as falling through that grate, is aligned with the grid. I suppose there's some subjective thought on whether this makes it too stiff, but I loved learning this. It feels like a great way to manage level design and control precisely where things occur from one room to the next. The "cinematic" in cinematic platformer implies a higher measure of control over the player's movements and actions as they solve puzzles in the environment, so it's a great choice.

Then there's the most obvious hook for me: they're just a kid!

Kids in peril. The locus of my creative efforts and interests these last few years. I find it so horrifying and unfair when kids are placed in peril, which makes stories about kids in that peril really compelling, in particular in a fantasy and horror context, because I want them to make it out okay. I don't want this kid to fall and die again and again, and the luxury of a video game is having an infinite number of chances to help that kid get past one particular horror or another.

It's not a perfect game. I have my issues with literally the final moment of the game and question the developers' intent based on that moment (yikes), but players who ignore that tonedeaf choice are rewarded with an experience that is so solid, visually stunning, and enjoyable to play.

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In their hearts, cinematic platformer video games are about carefully staged and directed vulnerability. Being made of flesh in a world of horror and pain and lacking the support to rely on others, at least most of the time. A cinematic platformer character isn't a super-powered hero punching and blasting through enemies. (The ones that try to hybridize with action platformers typically fall flat in both worlds.) Weapons are scarce or completely absent, the enemies and hazards are numerous and almost always instantly lethal, and the game typically asks, "How can you flee from this situation?" Escape this room to escape again in the next room for a fresh new danger to confront.