‘Comic book shooter’ Void Bastards is coming to Switch and PS4

‘Living comic book’ strategy-shooter Void Bastards is coming to Nintendo Switch and PS4 on May 7.

Developed by Australian studio Blue Manchu, Void Bastards originally released for Xbox One and PC via Steam in May 2019 to favourable reviews.

Inspired by BioShock and System Shock 2, the strategy-shooter tasks players with leading a party of prisoners through the “derelict spaceships and myriad dangers of the Sargasso Nebula”.

Ben Lee, art director at development studio Blue Manchu, elaborated in an interview with ShackNews: “This game is all about surviving in the Sargasso Nebula, moving between ships, combining a strategic layer of resource management and map movement with an action component of FPS combat as you explore each ship and look for the loot you need to craft your way to freedom.”

While gunplay can be a useful means of achieving your goals, Lee said you don’t necessarily have to kill anything, noting “it’s often a bad idea to engage in too much combat”.

And on the subject of the game’s art style, which has been likened to Borderlands, Lee said: “Well that wasn’t actually the inspiration. The inspiration was, how can a team this small with an independent budget make a first person shooter that does all of the FPS systemic stuff that we want to do with our studio’s lineage with System Shock and BioShock without doing a huge expensive art style, and at the same time leveraging all of our collective experiences.

“A lot of my background was in comics and animation before I got into video games. The intent was to make a game that felt like you were playing inside a living comic book as opposed to in reality or a cartoon.”