Voidsayer Review

Pokémon, If the World Had Already Lost

Voidsayer takes the structure of a classic monster-taming jRPG and drenches it in dread. The store page sets the tone immediately: "The world has fallen into darkness, cursed by the Abyss. You are one of the many hapless survivors at risk of being consumed." Rather than a bright, colourful region to explore, players assemble a team from over a hundred tameable monsters and push into procedurally generated expeditions where every random event is, as the store page puts it, "a risk of crippling your team." Reviewers reached for the same handful of comparisons independently and consistently: "Darkest Dungeon/Dark Souls meets Pokemon, with the slay the spire map for runs," wrote one, while another called it "Pokemon Meets Role Playing in a Dark Fantasy atmosphere." A third summed up the pitch bluntly: "This is a masterpiece... I've heard different names being thrown around — Pokemon, Dark Souls, Slay the Spire — all trying to describe the unique vibe that this solodev caught."

A Type Chart With Teeth

The turn-based combat layers a fairly traditional elemental type system — "Grass is beaten by fire, but fire is beaten by water," as the store page describes it — on top of monsters defined by "genetic predispositions and distinct personalities affecting their performance," each further shaped by gear and evolution paths. Several reviewers praised how legible the system stays even as it deepens: one liked that "by pressing CTRL you can view every single trait and status effect on the fly," and another described the loop as "more difficult than any monster collector I've played, which is a good thing, but everything is laid out for you." The settlement system gives runs a persistent thread between attempts, letting materials gathered on expeditions upgrade buildings back at the player's home base — a structure one reviewer likened to "Oregon Trail meets Pokemon," pointing to the punishing map events as the game's defining feature rather than a flaw. Boss encounters get similar attention to the store page's stated design goal of variety over raw stat inflation, with each one built around a level-specific gimmick rather than just bigger numbers; the store page describes them as ranging from "tweaking the underlying gameplay slightly to completely upending gameplay you're used to, forcing your monsters to adapt — or die," and reviewers who reached the later fights generally singled out specific bosses by name as high points even when they were otherwise critical of the run structure around them.

Uncompromising by Design, Frustrating in Practice for Some

Voidsayer wants to be hard, and most negative reviews accept that framing while arguing the difficulty tips into unfairness. "There is no way to fully heal so you have to farm gold on multiple runs to afford one weak health potion," wrote one dissatisfied player, while another described losing to enemies despite being "five levels above" them, calling the balance "horrible." A more measured critical review put it as a structural problem rather than a difficulty complaint: "This game has a lot of very promising COMPONENTS and then loses it all through its completely weird and unsatisfying structure." On the positive side of the same coin, fans framed the punishment as the point: "Brutally difficult, but greatly satisfying," and pointedly added, "IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PAYING ATTENTION TO TYPE ADVANTAGES/STATUS EFFECTS/STATS, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME."

A Post-Launch Rebalance That Split the Playerbase

The most consequential controversy in Voidsayer's review history isn't about difficulty tuning at launch — it's about what happened afterward. Multiple reviewers describe the developer overhauling core combat mechanics shortly after release. One wrote plainly: "Released game, then completely overhauled it to change the combat system. That's all well and good, but don't release the game then immediately change it." Another was more pointed: "After launching the game, the dev arbitrarily decided to change almost everything about it, breaking all current builds and ripping out several core elements and strats. The changes are so fundamental that the screenshots and videos are now a lie." A separate reviewer flagged a related complaint about a retroactively added achievement: "The dev added a final-battle achievement after release. I had 100%'d the achievements for this game and am now one achievement short." Not every player experienced the rebalance as a betrayal — some reviews written afterward describe the combat positively without objection — but the pattern of complaints is specific and consistent enough that anyone buying in expecting the mechanics shown in early footage should know they may not match the current build.

A Distinct, Difficult Take on a Crowded Genre

Where Voidsayer clearly succeeds is in tone and presentation. Reviewers repeatedly praised the "grim-dark" art direction and the way the game commits to its atmosphere rather than softening it for a wider audience. One finished player called it "a lot of fun" and said it "delivers on what it promises: Creature tamer but with a dark twist," while another compared the combat favourably to the genre's usual comfort food, saying it has "that old-school Pokemon feel, but with just enough extra spice to keep it interesting." At NZ$22.49 with no premium currency involved, it sits as a straightforward one-time purchase rather than a live-service monster collector, which several reviewers noted approvingly given how much of the genre elsewhere leans on monetised progression.

Verdict

Voidsayer earns its "Mixed" Steam standing honestly: it's a genuinely distinctive dark-fantasy monster tamer with real bite in its combat and art direction, undercut by difficulty spikes some reviewers found punishing rather than fair, and by a post-launch rebalance that a vocal portion of its playerbase felt broke trust with early buyers. Players drawn to Darkest Dungeon-style unforgiving design layered onto a Pokémon-shaped skeleton will likely find plenty to like here, provided they go in aware that the mechanics may have shifted since launch and that a comfortable, forgiving experience was never the goal.