Volume features a level-creation tool that I played with too briefly to critique, but it's likely to spawn many more maps, many more patrols and patterns. I'm looking forward to playing the best of them. Bithell's sophomore effort is a lovely thing made up of spellbinding puzzles that demand the player's attention. Its beauty, wit and intelligence are nicely offset by its quiet anger.
Intrusive storytelling gets in the way of gameplay
Inconsistent AI
Expert reviews and ratings
60
Volume has an intriguing story and fun stealth techniques, but the game's repetitive mission structure and easy-to-evade enemies keep it from being one of the genre's standout...
A stealth game built to satisfy the central tenets of the genre in the most discrete, distilled, trimmed-down way possible. Certainly well-crafted, but simply not that...
However, such considerations are minor, and there’s an awful lot of pleasure to be had from Volume. Its uncluttered gameplay emphasises the puzzle-solving aspect of stealth, the level design is brilliant, the gadgets are sometimes clever enough to make you chuckle out loud and the whole experience is both surprisingly meaty and absorbing to the point of distraction.
Volume is the second game lead by Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone. Instead of being a purely narrative driven game like his previous effort, Volume builds something that feels much more traditional as a video game. What we have here is a...
Volume may suffer from a few issues of poorly designed AI and easily exploited level design, but I still found a great number of challenging rooms with an intriguing story to match, and plenty of room to master.
Volume features a level-creation tool that I played with too briefly to critique, but it's likely to spawn many more maps, many more patrols and patterns. I'm looking forward to playing the best of them. Bithell's sophomore effort is a lovely thing made up of spellbinding puzzles that demand the player's attention. Its beauty, wit and intelligence are nicely offset by its quiet anger.
It's this clarity that keeps impressing me. So many games are cluttered these days, piling features on top of busywork. Volume isn't short of great ideas, but it delivers them gracefully, one at a time, layering simple concepts on top of solid mechanics to create the sort of organic gameplay experience that seems effortless.
Volume’s story levels are designed with the same care that players must use when playing, and I enjoyed the experience from start to finish. With true stealth games a rare breed today, Volume stands as a declaration that the formula can still work.