Void Bastards, which blends strategy, shooting, roguelike elements and sardonic humor, is coming on May 29, Humble Bundle announced yesterday. The game is launching on Windows PC as well as Xbox One, where it will make a same-day appearance in the Xbox Game Pass library.
Void Bastards was revealed in November at X018, and developer Blue Manchu showed off a sci-fi adventure with echoes of FTL and System Shock. (Blue Manchu was founded by Jon Chey, who worked on System Shock 2 at Looking Glass.) The comic-booky visuals and campy tone are supplemented with weird sound effects and bizarre characters.
But overall, you’re dealing with a game whose goal is to raid other spaceships (this is where the procedural generation comes in), taking care to plot an effective escape route. The loot goes into the crafting and inventory that sew together the player’s overall progress and the story behind their exploits.
The bastards part of Void Bastards involves the crew the player selects, or apparently is stuck with in some cases — a gang of misfit prisoners with skills useful for specific types for jobs. Being convicts, of course, means they’re expendable
We went hands on with Void Bastards at the end of March and before that listed it as one of our most anticipated games of 2019.