Voidling Bound

Voidling Bound is a wonderful foray into creature collecting, and a fantastic debut title for Hatchery Games. You as the wrangler get to collect voidlings across a handful of alien worlds, raise and level them up, breed them for better stats and traits, mutate them for powerful genetic adaptations, and splice those abilities across all discovered species with a colossal amount of customization before deploying them back onto the field. Overall, I really like the progression in this game - collecting mutagens to mutate the voidlings, collecting science points to upgrade ship modules and unlock permanent upgrades to the voidlings themselves, and leveling up individual voidlings as they get more seasoned. The splicing mechanic is a game changer when you get around to unlocking that - every single mutation unlocked across every single species can be applied to any voidling at all to transfer their abilities and color palettes. Breeding your voidlings for the best stats, best traits and then carefully curating a build of spliced genes and good looks is extremely satisfying. I'd be doing Hatchery Games a disservice if I left the soundtrack out of this review; it's wonderful - plain and simple. I'm genuinely tempted to pickup the Soundtrack DLC at some point just so I can listen to it outside of the game. Before I prattle off a couple small nit-picks, I want to preface that I very much DO RECOMMEND Voidling Bound, It's a phenomenal game that's well-worth its listed price in my opinion. That out of the way, I think the lack of voice acting is a little jarring. You get used to it eventually, but almost every conversation with the crewmates feels like it's missing that extra bit of spice. There aren't too terribly many levels; if you're blitzing through them without 3-starring everything, then you'll probably find yourself at the end of the game pretty quickly (maybe ~10 hours). For more context, I've 3-starred every mission, dabbled around with breeding and splicing some high-powered voidlings and played around for a bit in the late-game loop with a total playtime of about ~30 hours.