I feel less like I am playing Void Stranger and more like this game is playing me. In less than ten hours with this game, Void Stranger has put me on trial, led me into traps, and outright laughed in my face.
I am not yet finished with this game… or perhaps this game is not yet finished with me. Void Stranger drew me in with the promise that it hid its secrets and that there was very little information about it online. The challenge of discovery and the thrill of experiencing something few people ever will guided me to this game. I have gotten more than I bargained for.
I might never be finished with Void Stranger, and it might never be finished with me. For every mystery I uncover, two more seem to spawn. I don’t have answers or strategies to share with you this time. What I do have are the few mysteries I’ve uncovered and my search for answers. Join me down the rabbit hole and become unraveled with me.
Choosing a Brand and an Edition
This game starts very simply. A black-and-white screen details the controls for the game. This includes how to move, how to open the menu, as well as the select button. Then, without further ado, the game asks you to create a brand. This is your first experience with the true madness of this game.
Selecting a brand entails manipulating a board of black tiles and flipping some to white. You can make any pattern your heart desires. You can also leave all the tiles black or flip them all to white.
In my case, I made a brand that was pleasing to my eye, flipping about half the tiles white, and then confirmed my selection. A little while later I was greeted with a title screen that read “Void Stranger: Gray.”
Void Stranger’s command to select a brand at the very start of the game appears to be a hidden prompt to select which edition of the game you are playing. By making a brand with black and white squares, I’ve ended up playing the Gray edition. I am almost confident that I had a chance to play Void Stranger: Black or Void Stranger: White if I had flipped all the squares to one color.
Right now, it’s impossible for me to say for sure if there are other editions. I can only tell you what I’ve experienced from Void Stranger: Gray. There may be editions representing different shades of gray. There may even be more editions than White and Black, like Void Stranger: Rainbow. I simply don’t know.
I also don’t know what the brand actually is or what it means. Every time I open my menu, it appears down in the bottom right-hand corner, silently reminding me of the choice I made. I don’t know if I made the right choice. I don’t know if there is a wrong choice. Void Stranger continues to haunt me with my ignorance.
Secret Mechanics
The mysteries of the brand are not the first secret you can find. Immediately upon entering the game, you might be tempted to set the game to full screen, like I was. On instinct, you might press the escape key. After all, that’s pretty much universally accepted as the way to access a menu, right?
Not in Void Stranger. Pressing escape immediately flashes a progress bar at the bottom of the screen that ominously proclaims: “end it all.” If you hold down the button for long enough, the game closes.
This feature, the ability to “end it all,” is purposefully kept from you. When you start the game, the screen that explains Void Stranger’s controls noticeably omits this information. The game’s controls screen certainly doesn’t mention what happens when you right-click the mouse.
So far, I have found two secret buttons in Void Stranger. I have no idea if there are more or even if I am missing key mechanics that are central to progressing or unlocking secrets. It’s hard to even say for sure what the buttons I’ve already found do. I have no idea if the game logs when or how many times you “end it all.” I don’t know if this is a secret way to skip dialogues or if pressing it too much, or at all, permanently alters how the game progresses.
There is so much I don’t know. Void Stranger delights in it. This is how it drags you further in.
What is Happening?
You may have noticed I haven’t actually mentioned what the game is about. That’s because I’m honestly not sure. There are only a few pieces of concrete information that Void Stranger gives out when the game starts.
Void Stranger: Gray begins with a cryptic cutscene that shows a void in space that seems to explode near a planet. Then, the screen flashes a cryptic symbol before cutting to a woman wearing a pendant who jumps into a square hole in the ground. The hole in the ground leads to the Void, a labyrinthine megadungeon with dozens, if not hundreds, of floors. The woman with the pendant is our player character, though we’ll have to wait for a while to learn a name for her. Most characters simply call her Stranger.
After falling into the Void, the next room that awaits the Stranger contains a massive statue of a horned woman wearing a pendant and an ornate chest. The stairs to continue further down are inaccessible due to a gap in the floor. Opening the chest gives you the first item in the game: a strange rod that makes you feel uneasy. The game proclaims that something is wrong.
The rod is your tool, Void Stranger. It allows you to pull up a piece of the floor and lay it down elsewhere. This lets you cross the gap to pass to the stairs. This begins a familiar cycle in Void Stranger. On each new floor, you’ll use the rod to progress and solve puzzles to go deeper and deeper. There is no (supposedly) path back up. All that remains is to delve further down and uncover as many secrets as possible.
The Pendant
The opening sequence of Void Stranger: Gray is also one of the few moments when this game actually offers up information. Upon falling into the void, an achievement unlocks. In fact, this is the only achievement in the entire game. The achievement’s description is simple: “Pendant. An important wedding gift.”
This achievement may be the key to unlocking vital information about the plot, but unfortunately, I’m still searching for clarity. There’s no information yet on who the main character was married to or if the pendant was even hers. To complicate matters, the pendant appears to be tied to multiple people. Still, whatever else might be true, it’s clear that the pendant is incredibly significant, and the game wants you to pay attention to it.
Put on Trial for My Crimes
This game can be quite challenging. Once you pick up the rod, your movement becomes locked so that you can’t turn without moving. This means you need extra tiles to be able to turn and you can’t go everywhere you want. Navigating is a challenge, and you can trap yourself in a space where you cannot move without falling.
To top it off, it is very easy to die in this game. Falling into the void will kill you. Running into any of the monsters that stalk the halls will deal 999 damage. You start the game with 7 HP after falling into the void.
With these conditions, it’s understandable to seize every advantage you can get. In my case, I realized it was possible to exit the game if I was unable to avoid a monster or I’d trapped myself into a dead end. After reopening the game, the level reset. So, I kept doing this as a way to advance.
I was promptly put on trial for my crimes. After resetting enough times in one level, I was abruptly thrown into a trial where an actual Judge, Prosecutor, and Defense Attorney appeared. I was accused of using brute force to recklessly advance without any strategy.
My defense attorney was honestly no help at all. She all but confessed that I was guilty but said maybe this behavior was commendable.
I, of course, pled not guilty. I was allowed to progress, though I had learned my lesson. This game is watching you. It knows if you’re trying to cheat it. I had no desire to run into the judges again. So, I continued on, taking care not to reset unless absolutely necessary. I was a fool.
The Bargain
Once I stopped resetting floors, I started to die a lot. Slowly but surely, I started to burn through my revive items until, eventually, I ran out, and I died for real. That’s when I met… this creature. A small little puff-ball with horns.
The creature offered me a chance to keep going. All I had to do was eat some fruit, and I’d be bound to this realm. I took the deal. From that moment on, my HP count was replaced with a message that just read VOID.
Dying became trivial. Any death would simply reset the level with no consequences. I collected revive items, but they no longer mattered. I simply could not die. If only I felt like it was worth it.
The moment I took the offer and ate the fruit, I felt awful. I felt like I had done something deeply wrong. Every time I opened the game, that health bar reading VOID seemed to reinforce this message. Taking the fruit feels like doing something permanent.
I’ve since fixed my HP bar by taking a road less traveled with the aid of a statue. (What road? Which statue? I’ll leave that for you to discover…) My HP no longer reads VOID, but I can’t help but feel as if that means very little.
Once again, I simply don’t know. Games like Undertale have made me cautious about what a game knows and what it remembers, even if none of the characters do. I don’t know if taking that fruit did something to change my game permanently. I took a cursed bargain, and I got to keep playing. For now, that has to be enough.
Only a Memory Remains
Memory is an important theme of this game. After I escaped my VOID health bar, I was given a message: “Only a simple memory will remain.” There are certain safe zones where you find trees that allow you to dream and see memories of your character serving as a medieval lady-in-waiting for a princess. What’s more, a brief trip to your menu will reveal an option that says “Memories.” Opening this submenu will allow you to spend gems collected from pieces of the floor to unlock images.
The images in the Memory menu don’t make sense. I’ve only unlocked three so far. The second memory shows a framed photograph of what seems to be a younger version of the princess from the tree memories… but she’s clearly drawing Kirby. The third image shows a picture of her jumping from a swing. At the bottom right is a date stamp as if it was a photograph. It’s dated from the 90’s.
While the memories gained from the tree appear to reveal pieces of your character’s story, something clearly doesn’t line up. These memories conflict with the memories from your menu. There seem to be several narratives being told at once. The story is told in the memories from the trees, the story of the void itself and what transpired to its lords, and the story told in the memory menu.
None of these stories line up yet. I’ll just have to keep going deeper to find out more.
Breaking the Game
I found a way to climb onto the game’s User Interface. In the rooms with the tree, you are able to tear up the floor and lay it down in such a way that you can move onto the UI. You can tear up the locus (your revive items) and place them somewhere else. You can also tear up chunks of the UI bar. Doing any of this causes the game to being to display error messages in the background.
There are some ways to manipulate the interface to make some interesting changes. Attempting to tear up the HP bar or the rod will close the game. However, there are more interesting things you can do. Things such as swapping the number of locusts with your HP, or with your basement level. Here, at last, you can find a way to go to a floor you’ve visited previously. You could also remove swap blank sections next to the HP total with the basement level and give yourself 1728 health. This would let you survive a hit from an enemy. However, if you tear up the letter for the floor level, the game breaks.
The Carcass
I don’t know whose carcass this is. I don’t know why it looks like that or why it almost resembles the pendant. When the game broke, I wandered aimlessly through black screens with only an error message and the music as my guide. That is when I found the carcass.
The carcass is ominous, terrifying, and enthralling. I want to know more, but Void Stranger denies me the opportunity to find more answers. Ultimately, I had to reset this level and return to the tree. One day, I’m going to return and confront the carcass. Maybe then, I will find my answers.
The Void Beckons
There is so much to love about Void Stranger, and so much I haven’t told you about. I haven’t dove into the Saga of “Lord Add,” the secrets of the Eggs, and my encounters with mysterious characters. I haven’t even told you how I found my second key item.
Void Stranger is rife with the feeling of genuine discovery. Since this game is relatively unknown, it feels like each secret I find could genuinely be the first time anyone has found it. I love the feeling of finding something new that might be just for me. Void Stranger loves that I love it, too.
This is how the game draws you further and further in. Secrets beget more secrets and your search for discovery and truth only pulls you further down, down, down into the Void.
Void Stranger isn’t finished with me yet. Honestly, if there truly are hidden editions of the game, it might not be finished with me for a hundred hours or more. No matter how long it takes, I’m committed to seeing it through and finding out as much as I can. I may be a Stranger to the Void for now, but it won’t stay that way for long.
