the voidness is a forthcoming scifi horror game where you use an xbox kinectstyle scanner to reveal otherwise invisible enemies and if that sounds tense just know that those enemies will be able to hear your reallife breathing so keep it downive always been a sucker for psychological horror games that use interactivity in unique ways and this sounds right up my alley the scanner used by the space scientist protag isnt actually an xbox kinect thats just the first comparison my dumb brain could conjure up its actually a lidar scanner which is a reallife lightsensing technology typically used to study the earth in the voidness its used to examine a mysterious void filled with hostile alien creatures with the goal being to escape the spacecraft alive and also find out what happened to your missing crewmatesscenes from the trailer remind me of the 2012 horror movie paranormal activity 4 in which an actual xbox kinect is used in some moderately inventive ways i remember thinking the device was criminally underutilized in that movie and im hoping the voidness comes up with some brand new and nongimmicky ways to scare us silly with the scannerin terms of its own functionality the scanner can be upgraded to scan vertically and horizontally and have a greater scope furthermore at certain points youll be able to unlock scanning turrets to do the work for you in addition to identifying enemies items upgrades and the like the scanner will also help you solve puzzles as you make your way through the games different levelsas for the other hopefully nongimmicky gimmick that being the enemies that can pick up sounds from your microphone to find you there are some limitations the most obvious is that you can simply mute your microphone if you want to opt out of that particular risk and in fact the feature is entirely optional via ingame settings as well also the enemies will only be able to hear you when youre actively hiding which it sounds like youll be doing a lot ofgameplay is primarily based around stealthy movements and avoiding making noises both ingame and in real life for example walking over broken glass will alert enemies to your presence as will moving crates or knocking over objects when all else inevitably fails your object is to run away and hide from the entitythe voidness launches into steam early access on april 7 2023here are the best horror games to play this weekend