The world is, undoubtedly, a scary place. There is so much uncertainty in the day-to-day life, and, across the planet, adults, children and everyone in between struggle with facing their fears. In Elden Pixel’s newest tale, A Void Hope, it is the fear and the desire to conquer it that drives forward the story. For all the parallels and allegories that may be mixed into the title, it is the very essence of our own phobias and anxieties that stand at odds with the player and their quest. And, in that same vein, it is the fear of inaction that ultimately drives you forward, because, if nothing else, being afraid of doing nothing is far worse than the fear of doing something.

In a world not unlike our own, a disease has run rampant, infecting the population with an affliction that causes them to forget. Slowly, their memories of their lives and loved ones become confused and vague, until they are left as shadow-like creatures, alive but not living. Sometimes called Empties, they can sense those who are still healthy, and will sometimes attack them in fits of diseased mania. A husband and wife, trying to survive, ultimately decide to attempt to find a cure, with the belief that the wife’s memories of a loving and real world will be the catalyst to activate the vaccine. The path is far from easy, but they grimly venture forward to save not only the world at large, but themselves and the love they still have.

A Void Hope is, quite frankly, a beautiful and confusing little game. An exploration side-scroller with a bit of survival and puzzle solving, you take turns playing as both Gilda and Keegan across different parts of their now bleak world. Each stage has you discovering some hidden aspect, like an item to further your progress or a memory to unlock to better understand the back story. You will, ultimately, also backtrack to revisit certain areas once further items are found to help better unravel the tale. For example, you eventually discover a crowbar that allows you to break down boarded up doorways, which leads to even more pathways and details that help give A Void Hope a more complex existence.

Done up in the pixel art styling, there’s a level of charm and design excellence that makes A Void Hope visually appealing. Set in a time that feels a couple decades before the modern day, the characters and landscape are well crafted, allowing aspects of darkness and shadow to pop against the stark reality where the game takes place. I loved being able to traverse from woods to town, from city to mountains and then to uncover more and more details the deeper in you went. There’s a moment where you’re in a hotel that both feels occupied and abandoned in the same swing, and I think the pixel art lends itself incredibly well to these snapshots of duality. Had the graphics been in more lush or detailed tones, things could have gotten murky, but the angles of the pixels keep everything fresh and sharp.

It cannot be overstated how wonderfully encapsulating the soundtrack is. Done by Waveshaper (who also did music for Furi), this voyage of synthwave and electronica (with a poignant piano and string track at the end) is an aural feast to help really drive home the atmospheric elements of A Void Hope. Putting you in the mindset of some displaced and hopeless hero, the tonality and musical cues set the nerves alight as you try to wrap your mind around the world you must survive in. The soundtrack gives you the full weight of what transpires, and, when the music suddenly cuts out, it’s successful in the ominous, foreboding way it strikes at your heart.

Additionally, the pixels allows for the transition of the NPCs to be even more jarring. As you continue on, many of the shadow people will simply ignore you, but the occasional one will notice you and act. Some will come after you, first as shambling humanoids and, later, as beast-like entities with speed and precision. Some, which is far more concerning, will simply point and scream at you in a very Invasion of the Body Snatchers moment that always sets my nerves on end. The screaming will often activate other beings to notice you, and then it’s off to the races. Or, at least, it should be.

The concept and the execution of A Void Hope’s horror element are two very different beings. In theory, it should be like a Silent Hill moment in which you suddenly are beset by danger at the drop of a hat. In reality, the danger is slow moving and really only a problem in the first couple of stages where you have no recourse. Very early on, you get a gun with unlimited bullets that will auto lock on the aggressive baddies when you move the crosshairs sort of nearby. There was one area where I got attacked the second I walked onto a screen, which would have been an awful moment if I wasn’t simply able to walk away.

This is where the horror element gets further muddied. Who and what will attack you is, for the most part, randomized (an aggressive chef bursting out of a restaurant would be the one exception). So if you walk into an area and the NPC attacks too early or takes on the dreaded bird form (flies about and is hard to shoot), just leave and re-enter. More than likely, the “attack” flag has been shuffled to someone else, and you might be able to walk ahead without worrying. Or it’s the same dude, but now they’re just humanoid, which is easier to shoot than an early Romero zombie. In that same vein, you very, very rarely see more than one aggressor per screen, so, if you can ditch the shadow at a large crate they can’t climb, that’s the ball game: proceed unfettered.

A Void Hope then has to rely on puzzle solving, which is a decent little affair. Run around, find stuff, double back, find more stuff, and then move ahead. You need to solve five smaller puzzles that play like games of Snake in order to unlock the ending of the game, but these are simple enough and a nice break in the action. Usually, though, you’ll be jumping around and figuring out the hard way what is and isn’t a viable path forward. If you can’t go straight, the likelihood is there’s a path up to a doorway, and you go through there, solve a quick crate/door/elevator puzzle and then you’ve made a clear pathway so you never have to do that again. Progress!

When the graphics work, they work exceptionally well, but there are times where things don’t land. Early exploration in the forest has you jumping from platforms completely obscured by tree branches, which gave everything a very NES era “jump and pray” feeling that I didn’t miss. Further along, the mountain vault area has you jumping on window sills to start the level, but I couldn’t see them and didn’t realize that they were there. I thought I just couldn’t progress, much like a certain forest area that took far too long to unlock, and wasted way too much time going back and trying to figure out what I had missed before realizing the answer was right in front of my face.

Also, as a Nintendo Switch release, A Void Hope has several moments and discoveries that probably give you coveted achievements on other platforms but do exactly nothing for Nintendo users. I was so proud of myself for discovering how to reach some very out of the way places (a hidden house, a difficult radio) and was disappointed to realize the journey was its own reward. I shot so many televisions and microwaves, hoping it would mean SOMETHING, but nothing came of it. This clearly isn’t on Elden Pixels, but it does take the air out of the journey when you get nothing because Nintendo is now on the eighth year of the Switch lacking the most basic system possible.

As a not-very-long-game, A Void Hope tries to hang its hat on storytelling and allegory, but I don’t feel like either succeeds. Without spoiling too much, the plot twist about 30% through the game is a surprising one, but not entirely unexpected. Keegan and Gilda’s memories together feel very one dimensional, with neither really hearing the other’s perspective or concerns. When they talk about their family, it seems so flat and banal that further revelations don’t deliver a “woah!” and only a “huh?”  And Gilda’s entire martyrdom feels so empty because there’s less urgency than you’d expect. You have to save the world, but the world doesn’t seem to want saving, if that makes sense.

Plus, and I hate to be obtuse, but I’m still scratching my head over the title. I know it’s a play on “avoid hope,” and I suppose you could look at the infected people as “voids” who need “hope,” but it just doesn’t land in the way the developers intended. Instead, I took it very literally, and the people involved just don’t want to consider any kind of hope, which makes Gilda and Keegan’s quest seem very selfish. Also, what the hell is the beast preventing you from entering the forest initially?? I thought that would be some grand reveal, but nope! Just a murder monster that prevents you from moving ahead too fast. There are unexplained moments that never get satisfaction, just abandonment.

Ultimately, the entirety of their journey culminates in an ending that felt wildly unsatisfying and also too cookie cutter. For an indie game that has so many ideas and potential, A Void Hope delivers a short, neat package that doesn’t invite replay or inquest. I can’t even tell if it has some kind of apolitical stance on diseases and vaccines because the dialogue is very dramatic and then just gets resolved without consequence. It’s got its moments, but there isn’t anything here that drives me to demand people play it. If you like great soundtracks and short adventures, come on in, but, otherwise, I would say it’s an easy game to avoid.

Graphics: 8.5 Gorgeously shaped pixel art from top to bottom, bringing life into A Void Hope. Excellent transition for attacking shadow monsters, though some landscape elements get confusing.	Gameplay: 5.0 Not nearly enough consequence or difficulty with the survival elements. Puzzles are simple enough and often resort to backtracking and remembering where inaccessible points were. Going through everything was lovely, but I never feels terribly challenging. The PC puzzles are great, though.
Sound: 10 Good lord I love this music. Felt like I was transported back into an 80s horror movie in all the best ways, with a nice shot through of contemporary synth manipulation and a wonderful ending track. Zero issues, cannot wait to grab this soundtrack on Bandcamp or Steam or wherever.	Fun Factor: 5.0 Solid gameplay was juxtaposed with very confusing and arbitrary storytelling. The characters felt flat and, at times, unlikeable. The ending didn’t give me hope or satisfaction, but just confusion. The incentive to 100% explore was hamstrung by any sort of indication that I was making progress. It was good, but it just wasn’t great.
Final Verdict: 6.0

A Void Hope is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of A Void Hope was provided by the publisher.