Mediterranean Voidland

Exploration games are designed to help you relax, given the fact that they usually do not feature any puzzles, missions or quests for you to solve. Because of this, boredom is a big issue in the genre, but developers can work around it by designing interesting worlds. A good soundtrack helps a lot in most cases.

Mediterranean Voidland is a first-person exploration game in which you get to visit a colorful village somewhere on the coast of northwest Italy. Although most of your time is spent walking around and admiring the scenery, one of the other goals involves finding special drawings and symbols that allow you to teleport to other, smaller islands surrounding the main one.

Since this is basically a walking simulator with no real story or characters, don’t expect to be too immersed into the experience. The lack of a purpose can sap your enthusiasm after a while, but thankfully, there is something else to occupy your time with: Finding special symbols around the island. These allow you to gain access to other parts of the map that cannot be reached by road.

In essence, the whole experience is designed to feel like a virtual diorama, which is pretty original in the genre. The developer also focused on the architectural approach to level design, which means that the landscape is inspired by some interesting theories to say the least. Granted, the whole map is a tad too small to really get a grasp of the concept, but it’s definitely a great start.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the low-poly style is not a bad choice in the genre, especially since this allows even older systems to run the game without problems. The color combinations are very exotic-looking, which really makes you feel like you are on a tropical island. The soundtrack does its job too, although it can be a tad too short if you spend too much time in the game.

Even if Mediterranean Voidland is a bit too barren and boring at times in terms of gameplay, there’s certainly potential here, and it’s worth pointing out the fact that this is mostly a solo effort. Hence, you should definitely give it a try if you are interested in exploration and innovative level design.