As soon as I read that ex- Skylanders developers were working on a creature-raising indie game called Voidling Bound , I was interested.

While Skylanders admittedly became a sort of consumerist hellscape by the end of its very successful toys-to-life run with 2016’s excellent Skylanders: Imaginators , I always enjoyed the actual games themselves, admittedly. In a broad genre sense, I guess you could call them accessible dungeon crawlers, with seriously high production value, pumped with Activision’s AAA funding, of course.

The developers, Toys For Bob, were and are a great studio and did great work on those family-friendly titles. Shout-out to the new Spyro game they’re currently making, by the way. And also, I think Skylanders deserves a modern comeback, though Voidling Bound has been scratching some of that itch for me this past week, at least.

That said, Voidling Bound shares some noticeable DNA with the Skylanders franchise (and Borderlands, too). That’s expected, given Canada-based Hatchery Game’s pedigree. In the studio’s premiere independent game, you play the role of a nameless and faceless Space Wrangler, and through your ship’s advanced transfer technology, you routinely and psychologically bind yourself (get it?) to organisms called Voidlings.

It’s sort of like Avatar in that way, where your consciousness gets transferred to these strange creatures, and then you take said strange creatures on numerous terrestrial adventures. Skylanders in space, I’d call it, without all the plastic, and a touch more complexity. Although, to be fair, I’d love some Voidling Bound NFC figures, rampant consumerism be damned.

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So in essence, you have two distinct games going on: In one, you control the Wrangler aboard a space vessel populated with human crewmates, copious upgrade stations and a terrarium Voidling habitat. In the other, you directly control whatever Voidling you’ve sent down to a particular planet, wherein you’re tasked with eliminating stands of purple pollution and its accompanying purple bad guys, destroying ancient robots and exploring every nook and faraway cranny to collect research points and elemental evolution resources known as Mutagens.

The gameplay loop comes down to sending Voidlings to various planets, collecting resources, returning to the ship, filling out your Voidlings’ upgrade tree, upgrading your Wrangler and the ship itself, then returning to the planets again to begin the process anew. You can also evolve Voidlings and eventually breed them to create eggs, which you can hatch into evermore unique creatures, which can then be gene spliced to achieve further customization. The story is somewhat sparse; it’s mostly unoffensive and forgettable.

I adore the art style in this game, as well as the creature designs, as it all reminds me of Skylanders . Clear, vibrant and colorful, the Voidlings and their alien world continuously entice you to keep playing. These little monsters are cute in perhaps a beautifully upsetting way, which is just my kind of thing, honestly. There are eight species in total, from the Mogwai-esque Gwigoon to the turtle-inspired Kerapin, though my favorite has to be the Nimiods, which are basically sentient jellyfish.

The gameplay here also reminds me of Skylanders , in that the combat is rather simple and accessible, if too easy at times. Each Voidling has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, plus various moves that you can alternate between. You have to manage cooldown times and a meter that gradually builds up to an ultimate ability, and there’s a nice amount of strategy involved when it comes to blasting through hordes of enemies. Whereas Skylanders is a top-down dungeon crawler, Voidling Bound flips this into third-person action, so it’s much more fast-paced than Skylanders .

Controls feel good overall, responsive and a pleasure to wield. I will say some of the maps are a bit rough around the edges, at least in terms of sometimes clipping through walls and floors. They also can feel a bit empty at times and strangely devoid of life. On that note, while the music is ambient and atmospheric, I think Voidling Bound could have greatly benefited from even minimal voice-acting. You talk to several characters throughout the game, but the conversations can come across as hollow and lacking personality, due to the lack of actual voices. I know this is an indie game, so I understand the budget constraints.

Something else I noticed was how Voidling Bound can have a certain mobile game aura at certain points, on which your mileage may vary, depending on what shade of gamer you are. I think it has to do with the timed nature of some of the creature-raising, maybe. You can breed Voidlings, but you need to do missions before they’ll produce an egg. And when you train them in the exercise room, there’s a literal timer that clicks down. For me, I guess it cheapens the vibe of the game, because I sort of recoil at this specific free-to-play flavor, even though Voidling Bound isn’t free-to-play. Not yet, anyway.

In total, I played the game for around 11 hours and finished what you might call the main campaign, so as of right now, there’s isn’t a ton of meat on the bone. I basically used the same Voidling, a maxed-out Nimiod, throughout the entire game, which I think speaks to a lack of incentive to learn the other Voidlings and their playstyles. I did try a few of the other creatures but ended up coming back to my overpowered jellyfish, which was a little disappointing, really. I evolved a lot of different Voidlings, branching them into different elements, which was cool, and I bred plenty of them, but still.

Currently, I’m doing Void Strikes, which is the standing endgame for Voidling Bound . These consist of a risk/reward mode where you fight waves of enemies, and after each wave, you can choose to pack up and go home with your rewards or continue on and risk losing everything you’ve collected.

It’s fun, no doubt, but I really want more. As it stands, there are only four main areas to explore, which include three distinct planets and a yawning abyss. Sure, you can keep upgrading your ship and your Wrangler level, and you can continue evolving Voidlings, building out their skill trees, breeding them, petting them (fun!) and trying to get all the stars in the individual planet missions. But I found that once I completed the abyss, even Void Strikes weren’t enough to keep me playing for much longer.

In the end, Voidling Bound presents as a whimsical, extraterrestrial zoo that delivers on quirky fun, but somehow falls short on difficulty, content and the sort of production touches that would truly make this odd world come to life. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy my time with Voidling Bound— I really did—but I was left wanting and needing more . More planets, more objectives to accomplish on the maps, more Voidling species to discover, a larger expansion to the ship homebase, more incentive to make new Voidlings through breeding, and perhaps some voice-acting, if the team can afford it.

I’d love to see Hatchery Games fill this experience out over the next few years, as I think there’s a solid foundation here for a seriously complex and rewarding creature-taming package. I grew up loving games like Monster Rancher and Pokémon , so I’m rooting for the developers to eventually realize the full potential of Voidling Bound .

I know people complain about the lack of variety in the AAA games space, and there’s some truth to that, but guess what? P lay indie stuff . Titles like this prove that there’s still so much creativity happening in the industry. Yeah, Wolverine looks great, but come on, man. Go pet some aliens. You’ll feel better, I promise.

Developer: Hatchery Games

Publisher: Hatchery Games