Reverse Katamari. In the absence of rolling things up into a big ball, a reverse Katamari game usually involves swallowing things into a bigger, ever-growing black hole. Fill the Void is the latest game to enter this niche subgenre, and I approve. It has bugs and some rough edges, but there is a diamond waiting to be found if you persevere and click with it. It’s also not an incremental! Hurrah!
Fill the Void has an ambiguous story and setting, which appears to take place under the sea. Levels aren’t all underwater, though. We’ve got a bowling alley, a sushi restaurant, a mountain valley, and some urban settings to swallow up alongside origami butterflies and watery plant life. Each level starts off with the player as a black hole that can transform into an acrobatic blob at the touch of a button. As a blob, you can’t swallow up anything, but you can jump to different areas or warp up and down levels in stacked environments. This freedom of movement opens up all kinds of strategic directions and possibilities when trying to swallow as much as you can within the time limit, but it also brings out one of the game’s biggest bugs.
Movement in Fill the Void is very glitchy. There are environments that become too small as the black hole swallows items and gets larger. The only way to move is to transform into the ball and attempt to jump to somewhere larger, but the game often doesn’t want to let you escape the prison of your smaller area. It’ll snap you back into place, leaving you stuck and wrestling the controls. The same issue also plagues switching height levels. You might want to warp from the floor to a table, but the game will often refuse the request or leave you stuck in the middle of the table, unable to move. Far too much time is spent wrestling with the control system and recovering from glitches. It spoilt my overall experience and often prevented me from reaching certain score thresholds to unlock future levels. After a few attempts, I’d get in a clean run, get the score, and unlock a new level, but it shouldn’t have to be that hard because of glitches and glitches alone.
It’s deeply frustrating because when Fill the Void works, it sings. When the controls flow, you have a good range of movement and can chain up jumps and moves before gobbling up half a restaurant of food, or ten pins in the alley. Just like the Katamari games, Fill the Void tracks all the different objects you swallow, and trying to 100% each level is quite challenging, as some items are hidden away in tricky-to-reach places. The stars you earn can be used to buy upgrades, such as a double and then triple jump, or a magnetic pull radius towards you. The magnetic pull makes the game a touch easier, but it can also cause some graphical slowdown in very chaotic areas.
Beyond the main game mode, there is local and online multiplayer to race each other to gobble up the most objects in versus mode. There is co-op, but honestly, the fun is in versus now that I’ve played it post the video review. There’s also a level editor! We’ve never had this feature in a Katamari-esque game before, and it’s a fun feature to explore. Placing objects, terraforming the level, and arranging things is relatively straightforward. It highlights that Fill the Void doesn’t have a huge range of objects to play with, so you’ll need to get creative with the level layout to make a truly worthy custom level.
It’s a tentative recommendation from me for Fill the Void. There is a lot of jank and glitches that ought to be smoothed out over time. I genuinely hope they are, because there is an 8/10 game waiting to be polished here (at the price point it’s released at), and the additional modes and features could help move the genre on beyond its simple premise. Fingers crossed.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
