Voidsayer May be the Bleak Creature Collector RPG You Didn’t Know You Wanted

What’s that? You’re saying that you like Pokémon and other creature collecting games, but wish they were much bleaker? That you want to collect creatures but want to trade their smiling faces for the harsh tone of something like Darkest Dungeon? Then do I have the game for you! I played Voidsayer at PAX East 2025, and as much as I don’t generally like describing games as “a combination of [X] and [Y] games,” picturing Pokémon with the vibes of Darkest Dungeon really does give you an exact, if unexpected and incongruous, picture of what you may be in for.

I don’t intend this comparison to be reductive at all, either. Going in, I knew to expect a dark tone and that I’d be collecting creatures that are rougher around the edges than I’m used to (we can discuss some of the nastier Ultra Beasts another time), but the narrative, gameplay, and world of Voidsayer really left an impression. Starting out in a rundown town with minimal resources in the middle of a bleak landscape, I quickly learned about Entities (Voidsayer‘s creatures) and chose a starter, which, yes, was a choice between fire, water, and grass flora.

My fire dragon buddy and I went off to explore the road with what minimal provisions I could afford. Each road in Voidsayer features several branching and intertwining paths along a horizontal map, with most stops along the way shrouded in mystery. Sometimes it will be an encounter with a wild Entity, a person, a weather event, or any other manner of often bleak event that could sap life energy or raise the curse meter for your current journey. Maybe I was lucky, but more often than not, I managed to hit spots that did both! Some events allow you to uncover upcoming map icons to make informed travel decisions. Some paths have colored accents, offering various effects like healing if you are fortunate, or more likely, less-than-ideal effects.

Simply traversing Voidsayer‘s map made the cruelty of the world immediately apparent, which in turn made me consider my actions carefully. No doubt this could make adventuring daunting. But on the flip side, I got a little thrill each time I succeeded in battle or made it to the end of a given road in one piece. The potential for failure made each victory more powerful, no matter how small.

Voidsayer’s combat doesn’t stray overly far from its inspiration, featuring one-on-one battles with wild Entities that you can capture, plus battles with people and their “owned” Entities. Entities have a selection of moves in battle. I don’t know the maximum, as in the early game I had one to three at most. Some moves (or maybe all?) have reduced effectiveness after two consecutive uses, which is a clever way of encouraging you to mix up your moves and not rely on any one powerful move each time.

Like Entities themselves, moves have different types and effects, which is where my most beloved feature of Voidsayer came in — the ability to press a key to bring up a full-screen list of every icon, passive ability, and effect, alongside a flowchart showing each type’s effectiveness against each other. You can see it below, and it’s something I want every creature collector to have, because it’s so very helpful when learning a new one.

After some battles, adventuring, and collecting, one of the last things I did was to rebuild and enhance some of the town’s structures, opening up new options like the creature “dex.” The gameplay loop of venturing out, collecting, battling, and merely surviving to make it back and improve the town is enticing. I can easily see it being satisfying for people who love games where you work towards incremental change and improvement. I didn’t get to see much of this as a “loop” per se, as on my next venture into the wilds, I chose the more difficult of two paths, and my two Entity team did not survive the process, even with my mean-ass lobster guy. What, I’m going to take time to grind and level up during a 20-minute demo session?

For a game I knew only the minimum about going in, I left impressed with Voidsayer. It nails the dark atmosphere it’s going for, with fearsome Entity designs and a dreary Gothic design sensibility from the fonts to the color palette. Aside from the occasional confusing UI choice (some “proceed” buttons were not always visually obvious to me in terms of their design or placement), I am sure the game will appeal to players looking for a vastly different tone in their creature collecting RPGs.

Voidsayer launches next month, on June 2nd, 2025, for Windows via Steam. There’s a demo available — possibly the same demo I played! — on Steam as well.