VHOLUME is a game where jumping off of walls makes you go faster. My sleep schedule never stood a chance.
It's incredible how the game manages to be, at the same time, both a laid back movement sandbox AND an optimized time trial gauntlet. Both experiences feel fully fleshed out, the maps often have a sprawling brutalist landscape encasing a "main path," which you can follow to the end, or veer off to explore the strange beauty of the environments and find collectibles/hidden NPC interactions, OR find route-shattering shortcuts.
I was surprised at how enjoyable the multiplayer experience for the game is. It can be daunting watching the replay ghosts at the top of the leaderboards to try and learn a new route, but when you're in a room full of other people banging their heads into the same wall you are, it takes a lot of the pressure off. People will workshop in the chat if a minor change to the route is viable or not, they'll hype you up when you break a top daily time, they'll commiserate with how much this game hurts your wrists. It's a great social experience.
If I could make one suggestion: TAG. Make some multiplayer exclusive maps that're more arena-like than track-like (you could probably just paste in gm_bigcity tbh), and let me chase/run from other players! It would be so cool to use this movement system in a more adversarial way.
This game is fantastic, and well worth the $8. I will be putting many dozens of hours into it in the near future. And probably hundreds if we get a Tag or Hunted gamemode!
