Voidblade
Voidblade is a N64 homebrew game made by Anacierdem and released on 7 December 2021. It’s an arcade-style game you play as two triangles moving a square around to destroy pentagons. It won 3rd place in the 2021 64brew game jam, well done!
You can download the ROM and source code from the download page for this homebrew game by using the password byanacierdem
or see the source code on Github and download from Drive.
Voidblade gameplay and style
This game doesn’t have a storyline, so we’ll just focus on the rest of the game here.
Gameplay
Voidblade is an arcade-style game, so the objective is to get as many points as possible before dying.
In order to get points, you need to catch falling pentagons with your spinning square ‘blade’. The longer the game progresses, the more points you get per pentagon. It’s like a triangular sequence, but with some repeated numbers.
The game ends in three ways:
- One of the triangles touches the edge of the screen
- The string connecting the two triangles stretches too far
- The triangles receive a total of three hits from either the pentagons or the spinning blade.
Letting the pentagons hit the bottom of the screen does not incur any penalty.
You can also let go of the trigger buttons to phase your triangles and blade out of existence, but that causes your triangles to drift downwards. Also considering that the pentagons also move down, it becomes fairly hard to use it in an evasive maneuver.
Controls
Each of the triangles are controlled separately. In one-controller mode, it’s with the D-pad, C-buttons and L/R triggers, while the two controller mode has you use a joystick and Z-trigger on two separate controllers.
I think that the choice of controller mode really depends on whether you want to have analogue controls or digital controls. Check how wonky your joystick is and choose from there.
Style
Voidblade is fairly simplistic in its style. Everything (besides the text) is a flat polygon on a black background. The only non-polygonal shape in the game is the string that connects the two triangles and the blade.
The soundtrack in this game is fairly ominous. It has a droning sound in the background, only making a sound effect when something collides or when the string stretches.
‘Control’ theme
The two ideas that come to mind are that you have to control two triangles at the same time, and that the triangles control the spinning blade.
Credits
The game was made by Anacierdem, using stock sounds by Erokia and Jsfxr.
Review and Conclusion
Voidblade is one of the simpler homebrew games out there, both in terms of gameplay and appearance. Despite this, it did take me a while to figure out how to play since there’s no in-game tutorial or attached instructions. I mean, it is kind of obvious that you control the triangles and have to cut the pentagons with the blade, but the use of void phasing and string-stretching limits was very confusing. At first I thought that what was killing me was that I was holding the triggers for too long – that you had to ‘recharge’ your ability to move the triangles.
Another part that was confusing was when I died from touching the edge of the screen. I was playing this on a widescreen TV so the borders were a bit ambiguous because of the letterboxing. You kind of just need to guess where the deathzone is.
I do like Voidblade’s sound design though. It does give the feeling of emptiness (or ‘void’, if you will). I felt like I was playing something like Asteroids on the Atari 7800.
That said, the game does feel quite claustrophobic. You’re always on your toes trying to dodge falling objects while still not stretching your string too far. You do want to keep it fairly taught so that you don’t damage yourself on the blade. The ragdoll-esque physics on the string and blade are quite impressive and fun to play around with.
Overall Voidblade is an okay game. Once you get past the learning curve, it becomes fun to play for a little while. Though I think that there is a bit too many unexpected obstacles trying to kill you that makes it a bit frustrating to play for a longer period of time.