The creature collector genre has been one of our favorites, and it’s safe to say we’ve caught plenty of them across various games over the years. Voidling Bound is the latest addition to the bunch, and it tries to do things a bit differently by blending classic monster-taming mechanics with sci-fi, third-person shooter elements. After the trailer jump, we’ll show you exactly why we were genuinely surprised by how well these two worlds come together.
Finding the Right Challenge
There are four difficulties in Voidling Bound. While Collector focuses on a very laid-back experience, we strongly encourage you to try Adventurer for a more balanced challenge to make the exploring, collecting, and evolving your companions really worth it. Of course, for a much more challenging experience that will truly test not only your reflexes but your thinking when implementing some of the more complex systems, you could definitely try Fighter or, god forbid, Wrangler difficulty.
Becoming the Creature
You might be wondering what this is all about. At its core, Voidling Bound is a creature collector with strong PvE and action elements that allows you to hatch and evolve the so-called Voidlings. These space creatures are the only ones that can put a stop to a fast-spreading parasite that’s killing planets. By neuro-binding with a Voidling, you take control of the adorable, but deadly creatures, evolving them and upgrading their abilities so that you become as efficient as you possibly can against the ongoing and seemingly unstoppable threat to all ecosystems.
Each Voidling that you come across has attributes like strength, vitality, agility, essence, and recuperation. Whenever you level up, you can increase one of those attributes. Each creature also has a very unique set of abilities. Our first Voidling, Kwipeck, could shoot a stream of ooze. It could also dash and slash. It’s a very nimble assassin that we quickly learned to love like there’s no tomorrow.
Once you establish a neuro-binding connection, you stop being the scientist. The creature becomes your avatar. You start exploring the world as that creature. Those first opening moments were absolutely priceless, especially when we destroyed our first goo-like veins and saw how nature took over.
Fast-Paced Combat and Cleansing the World
Combat is equally exhilarating, letting you dodge, block, parry, or use primary and secondary attacks, which can be melee or from afar. Then, for an even more devastating impact, you can charge certain abilities or even use ultimates.
The devs tried their best to make everything click and feel very satisfying. To give several examples: certain abilities spend stamina so that you can’t be completely unstoppable, but there are tricks where if you’re fast enough you can regenerate stamina quicker, or you can collect the energy blobs that eliminated enemies leave behind. Also, once you take a lot of health from an enemy, you can rush it and quickly eliminate it Doom-style. Small but meaningful things like this really contribute toward a very immersive experience. Taking control of the numerous creatures, using their abilities, and upgrading them is highly satisfying.
The world is huge and exploration is rewarding, especially when dealing with the numerous enemies and cleaning up the corruption. In certain areas, cleansing must be done. By fully destroying the corrupted veins, a malignant heart can be exposed. Once the heart is exposed and destroyed, a climactic event where a challenging boss with waves of enemies will try to make a final push for the corruption to thrive. Of course, you will put a stop to it, but it won’t be easy. The boss’s attack and defensive patterns change in stages, and the legion of enemies will not subside until the big guy is down. You will get no leniency here, but that’s exactly why you will cherish every single victory. If, things take the wrong turn and you die, you will keep all the experience but you will have to start the mission all over again.
Upgrades and Evolution
Once you’re done with this, you get to go back to your ship and prepare yourself to fight another battle. After the first activity, we can take our brave warrior back to our base and off into the evolution chamber. Here, we can infuse mutagens and give our furry friend new abilities. Our first choice on the evolution scale was to pick whether to do fire or poison damage to the enemies. We chose the pyro element and gave our creature a new, fiery look. The next evolution step was solely focused on improving our fire abilities by allowing us to throw slower but explosive projectiles or to shoot smaller but a lot more chaotic projectiles.
The Cerebrum Enhancer, on the other hand, is a machine that allows us to expand our Voidling’s capabilities. It’s just a fancy coinage for a huge tree of mostly statistical improvements, like 10% stronger this or 25% faster that. You will come across some very useful secondary and ultimate abilities as well! Investing here can make a huge difference and infuse some much-appreciated variety into the upcoming battles.
Gene Crafting and The Abyss
But the customization doesn’t stop at standard evolution. While exploring those infested areas, you can rescue eggs to hatch new Voidlings. If you get lucky, they might have rare natures. You can even breed them, combining specific body parts, colors, and eye genes to craft a perfectly customized creature that fits your exact playstyle.
On the field, in the world, exploration is strongly encouraged. The devs have managed to create an intricate place filled with secret passages and useful things hiding above or below you. Once you feel like you’ve mastered the combat and built a strong team, you can test your limits in the Abyss. It’s a push-your-luck challenge where you dive deeper against tougher enemies for greater rewards. After every victory, you have to decide whether to risk going deeper or retreat to safety with your hard-earned loot.
Pushing the void
Voidling Bound offers a very rewarding loop of cleaning up corrupted planets. While collecting cool creatures, you are effectively crafting the perfect team. It doesn’t hold your hand on the higher difficulties, but the deep progression and breeding systems make the effort feel completely worth it. It’s a title that took us by surprise—one that we kept coming back to. Every time we did, we got more out of it. Those who enjoy action-heavy gameplay and have a soft spot for monster catching will be happy campers, and they won’t leave this world anytime soon.
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