Quantum Void Review: One Developer, One Very Strange Star System

A dimensional anomaly scattered a corporate fleet across an unexplored system. You have a tugship, a radio, and no particular authority to be here.

Two games, taking turns

Quantum Void alternates between piloting between orbital zones and exploring the wrecks you find there on foot. Neither half would carry a game alone. Together they work, because the flying is where you decide what to investigate and the walking is where you find out whether you were right.

The structure is closer to a Metroidvania than a space sim: the system opens up as you understand it, and the thing blocking you is usually knowledge rather than an upgrade.

The wrecks

This is where the game is strongest. Interiors are built to be read — electrical grids, air vents, the routes a crew would actually have used. You are piecing together what happened from infrastructure, and the game trusts you to do it without a marker telling you where to look.

It also means the story is genuinely missable. Some will find that bracing. Others will finish a run wondering what they walked past.

The ship

The tugship is the weaker half. Handling is deliberately heavy, which suits the fiction, but the first hour is spent fighting the controls rather than the distance. It does settle. It just settles later than it should.

VR

VR is optional and, unusually for a game this size, properly implemented — SteamVR with haptic support rather than a flat game with a headset bolted on. Playing flat loses nothing structural, but the wreck interiors are obviously built with a headset in mind.

Verdict

TacNours has made something with a clear idea and the discipline to stay inside it. At its price this is an easy recommendation, and the parts that do not work are the kind you forgive in a game one person built.