Overview of the game
Hyper Void is a railed based shooter that takes place in a space setting. The game uniqueness comes from the gameplay can have some inventive styles of controlling your ship from a left to right style of gameplay to a 360 degree “Tempest” style of gameplay.
General Gameplay
Hyper Void in its core is a rail shooter, what makes this game stand out is that you can go from a 2D to 2.5D style of gameplay. The game is a visual style fest with explosions and spacecraft shooting at every turn. You have your basic 3 different types of guns that you can use, a health bar for your ship and also shields. Throughout the game there are power ups that you can acquire to help you fight the onslaught of enemies that you will face through the dozen levels that the game has. Also throughout you will find “email style” messages in which it better tells the story of what is going on in the game and why you are doing what you are.
Audio
Not much here, you have some nice techno tunes, general ship gun fire, explosions but nothing else other than this. The game will immerse you into feeling that you are in space fighting for more time to get to the next checkpoint. It does a great job conveying ships getting hit by weapons fire, exploding, and other game sounds that you would find in a game like this. The general soundtrack is just the simple but still immersing for this title, but nothing that you would remember for a while. For families with 5.1 surround sound the game does not have anything that stands out. We did see that the sounds may be too loud for some younger gamers, and some very high pitch sound effects may be as well.
Visuals
The game is visually, so much that there is a warning for gamers that have an epilepsy warning for gamers that are sensitive to light patterns. However in our play through we did not see anything that would be alarming to gamers of any age to play this (More on epilepsy warning later in our review). The graphics are decent enough to show you ships and other elements in the game, however we did see that the game graphics are somewhat elementary and with little depth to them, maybe this was the style that the developers wanted to go into but for a game from an independent developer it does the job. The game does support 1080P and easily you can see all of the gameplay action without any trouble. For families with special needs gamers, the games vivid and fast moving graphics did make it a challenge for some to keep up with the game, so parents please keep this in mind when the game is running.
Controls
Not much to say about the controls other than they are very responsive for the game. The controls are easy for any family gaming member to pick up and play this game. The face buttons are for shooting and for a rapid dash, where the shoulder buttons also can be configured as well. The game controls can be customized for easier comfort for gamers, and in our initial play though we did not see anything that would inhibit anyone from playing this game.
Delivery
If you are in the market for a space shooter, this is not a bad game. We enjoyed the game, presentation and styling of Hyper Void. The game is an independent developed title, so do not expect to see the excitement of an AAA title. The game does has a charm for capturing the space shooter down to the sounds and controls. Is it the best shooter out there, no, but for the price and delivery of a shooter you cannot go wrong having this in your digital library.
Family Friendly
Earlier in the review we stated that there is a warning for people that are more at risk of getting epilepsy seizers, however it is good that they have this warning. When some of our special needs gamers were play testing this game, they did complain about the graphics being too fast or to bright, where others that play tested this complained that it was too flashy. This can be a warning sign that the game may not be for them, however do monitor your family members gaming habits to make sure that they are not getting any type of headaches or motion sickness from titles similar to this. The game itself is a simple but fun space shooter. The controls are easy enough to pick up and play and easy to have fun with, however what made us concern is that the game way of increasing the difficulty in later levels. This may anger or frustrate some gamers that may not be able to adapt to the cranked up difficulty later in the game. Also because the game has no multiplayer or online play, this title is restricted to just as a single player, which this is what the game is meant for. As the game does not contain any questionable lyrics or material this is a family friendly game that can be played by any member of the gaming family.
Closing
Hyper Void is a good space shooter that will fill that “void” of shooting things in space, with limited variations of enemies, level design, and gameplay do not expect to go any deeper into the void.
