void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium is a roguelike game about a robot protecting the last human girl in order to keep her safe from harm within the ruins of civilization. Through that concept, Void Terrarium is a game that manages to invest the player in its gorgeous and melancholy world, even in the face of brutally challenging gameplay.
Void Terrarium stars Robbie the robot, who awakens in a ruined underground city. Robbie encounters a sentient A.I., who explains that humanity moved underground to escape from poisonous fumes that wiped out most people on the surface. The underground colony was eventually destroyed, leaving only a single girl alive. The girl is given the name Toriko by her artificial protectors, as she is unable to speak. It's up to Robbie to explore the colony in order to find food, medicine, and shelter for Toriko, which is no easy task, as the ruins are overrun with mutated animals and killer robots.
The gameplay of Void Terrarium is broken into two segments - base building and dungeon exploring. The main goal is to keep Toriko alive in her giant terrarium, which involves crafting furniture and developing upgrades for Robbie, as well as keeping her fed and healthy. The dungeon crawling in Void Terrarium is a standard roguelike experience, with Robbie exploring procedurally generated stages on a massive grid while fighting enemies in turn-based combat.
The high points of Void Terrarium are its visuals and soundtrack. The sprites and overworld are gorgeous and they perfectly match the tone the game is setting, with Robbie and his friends seeming like insects pitted against a massive world that wants to destroy them. The chiptune soundtrack matches the somber tone of the game, as seen through the perspective of a machine. The fact that the two leads cannot communicate conventionally means that the developers had to make the characters evocative through their design and actions, which is done masterfully here. Void Terrarium succeeds in making players care for Toriko and wanting to keep her safe, which is the impetus for making them explore the dungeons and keep playing.
The dungeon exploration in Void Terrarium doesn't do anything new in terms of the roguelike genre. This would be the perfect roguelike to recommend to a newbie, except for one major flaw - the abundance of status effects. Void Terrarium loves to throw status effects at the player that turn success into a game of chance. It's easy to enter a room and suddenly be inflicted by paralysis, confusion, or slow effects, leaving the player easy prey for the monsters in the dungeons. This wouldn't be too much of an issue if it weren't for the fact that some quests require the player to descend numerous floors in a dungeon without any kind of checkpoints, which can take a long time and can easily be undone in a few seconds by random chance.
Void Terrarium manages to keep the player invested with a number of upgrades that can be forged. The dungeons are filled with blueprints and materials that can be used to build items in the base. Any item that is in Robbie's inventory is turned into resources when he is destroyed. These resources can be used to buy gear (like chips that act as character classes for Robbie), upgrades for the base, and furniture for Toriko's home. Every item is worth creating, as even the furniture will provide permanent stat boosts for Robbie. The player will get something out of each trip in the dungeon, and even a run that was derailed by bad luck will still feel as if it contributed to Robbie's quest. This steady drip-feed of progression, coupled with the need to find items to keep Toriko alive, make Void Terrarium an addictive gaming experience, despite its randomness.
Void Terrarium is a title that manages to be both beautiful and sad, somber and hopeful, and it keeps players coming back for more, despite its moments of frustration. Video games often task the player with saving the world or beating up groups of villains, yet Void Terrarium is about caring for a single person, and it manages to be far more engaging than most other titles in its genre.
void tRrLM(); //Void Terrarium is available now for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on in Europe and will release on July 14 in North America. Screen Rant was provided with a digital copy of the Switch version of the game for the purposes of this review.