Yup, it’s a Bit.Trip game

by Jon Erik Ariza

Fun factor: Fun

Worth to: Buy

Offers that same kind of retro fun with highly addictive gameplay, making it a fine addition to the Bit.Trip series.

Bit.Trip Void is the third entry in Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip series and their blend of 8-bit-inspired visuals and music, simple gameplay, and a vague star-crossing journey that remains as appealing as ever.

Same old trippin’ goodness

The game is nearly identical to its predecessors in many respects. Graphics, sound quality, vague story-telling mechanisms, and production values are all the same. If you simply couldn’t stand those elements from prior games, this one will not change your mind. If you simply loved the look and feel of the series thus far, step on up for another great rest stop on CommanderVideo’s mysterious bit trip.



Void is the first game in the series that breaks you free from a fixed position. Beat had you hugging the left side of the screen as a Pong paddle and Core had you locked in the center of the screen as a four-direction-firing core. In Void you are finally free to move on your own thanks to support for the nunchuk attachment or the Classic Controller.

The gameplay revolves around collecting black pixels and avoiding white pixels as they fly in and out of the screen from various angles in various patterns. As you collect black pixels, the void grows, moving slower and taking up more screen space. Pressing the A-button will shrink the void back to regular size and “bank” your score thus far. The more pixels you collect before shrinking, the higher your score multiplier, so you’re encouraged to keep your combo going until it’s absolutely necessary to shrink the void.

Of course, being a Bit.Trip game things aren’t as easy as all that. The game, like its predecessors, throws all sorts of curves your way, be it in the shape of power ups that cause the void to attract black dots, repel white ones, pixels that cause you to grow faster, or having a maze as a boss. The gameplay is simple, but it’s varied enough that it never gets old.

A few new additions to the game are continues and check points. Score enough points and you’ll earn a continue which lets you restart the level at your last checkpoint should you fail the stage. There are three checkpoints per stage dividing the level into four parts.



As I mentioned above, the graphics in the game are identical to the previous games, as are the game’s constantly shifting backgrounds. The background changes color and pattern as the music progresses, however the screen often shifts to an incredibly dark color that makes locating the black pixels, which you need to collect, practically invisible. It’s an odd design decision that is difficult to understand. It seems unnecessary to do that to make the game more difficult as its variety of patterns and gameplay twists do more than enough to make it a formidable challenge and it seems like such an simple design flaw to catch that it makes no sense why it was left in.

Summary

Regardless, the game is still very entertaining and the new gameplay, along with its small additions, make it another fine entry in the Bit.Trip series.