Post Void is an interesting little game. Hearkening back to the ages of Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake, Post Void would be the result of tossing the aforementioned games in a blender along with a gallon of PCP. Each level is a brightly colored adrenaline rush that can sometimes be painful to look at, but ends more quickly than the average millennial’s marriage.
In case the comparisons were missed earlier, Post Void is a classic style first person shooter with a psychedelic aesthetic. Levels are bite sized, and there are a variety of weapons to choose from and power ups you can obtain, a random assortment of which are offered to you in between each act of a level. Levels in Post Void are procedurally generated, and your goal is to reach a portal hidden somewhere in the stage so you can jump to the next- with all different sorts of enemies standing between you and the next level.
Post Void is both simple and fast, as levels can have all three acts that compose them beaten in mere minutes at a time. Time is such an important factor for Post Void because you’re on a timer that just so conveniently happens to also be your health bar. In the left hand of your character is an idol shaped like a shrunken head that continually drains unless you’re killing enemies, and if it empties due to taking too long or because you took too much damage, you die. This means your play must be precise and quick because your health bar is also a timer in which you must complete the current level; wasting time, getting lost, or taking damage are all equally detrimental and all have the same consequence.
New abilities are offered to players on a relatively constant basis, as players will be offered shotguns, SMGs, faster reloading, larger magazine sizes, more health/time, and even ricocheting bullets. Some of the power ups aren’t great, though some like the compass that points you toward the exit can make finishing the game substantially easier since you won’t waste time checking dead ends. Some refer to Post Void as having roguelike elements, but it’s honestly more like playing a classic PC shooter in a mode with only one life.
The experience of Post Void is almost surreal. You have to balance accuracy and speed in order to actually make your way through the trippy visuals and high tempo soundtrack of Post Void’s levels, and individual runs of the game don’t take long at all, so if losing progress after hours is something that frustrates you then you should be happy to know that such a concern is absolutely nothing in the face of Post Void. A complete run of the game’s 11 levels would probably be done in under 5 or 10 minutes, but actually doing so requires playing quite the number of times in order to familiarize yourself with the game’s level generation style, enemy placement, which perks best fit your play style, and more.
There’s nothing overly complex in Post Void- if you’ve seen an older shooter or any of the retro-revival shooters like Project Warlock, Dusk, Ion Fury, etc., then you know what kind of gameplay to expect from this game- just limit yourself to one weapon, and inject illegal substances directly into the game’s code, and you have Post Void as the result. There are enemies that pop out of walls that you quickly need to dispatch, enemies in suits that shoot at you, foes that try to bite you, and creepy crawlers that flash you (as if there wasn’t enough going on in the screen already).
If there’s any one particular critique that can be made of Post Void, it’s that the game can be a lot to take in, visually. There are bright colors, flashes, splashes of white on the screen when you get hit, and when your health gets too low and time is about to run out a very prominent, “3… 2… 1” countdown appears on-screen. Over top your crosshair and sometimes even blocking the enemies. Obviously, with familiarity this isn’t an issue, but after a while an approach of, “Caution to the wind” was adopted and only shooting the enemies directly in the way was what led to a first game clear.
Overall, if you’re just looking for a game that only takes a few minutes to play and feels rewarding to master, Post Void is a great choice for very little price. If you’re not a fan of shooters, don’t like games without story, or don’t like games in which you will constantly be restarting, then Post Void may not be for you. For a $3 cost, though, Post Void is actually quite a lot of fun. Do stay away from this game if you have even mild photosensitivity, because this game seriously strains the eyes and then obscures your vision with constant flashing effects.