Developed by Plantery Gear and Logical Extremes, Voyager is a minimalistic space sim where players take on the role of Voyager; essentially a little space probe. Your task is to bring back the light once more, venturing through and discovering little solar systems, and unlocking levels while relaxing to original music.

Discovering each new celestial body gets you one step closer to completing your journey. In order to find these planets, you must fly around the solar system in almost complete darkness. Each planet has its own gravitational pull, so if you notice Voyager variate slightly from its path, you might be close to one.

There’s not much of a story behind this game. You get a little heads up at the start for what is happening, but the rest of the journey is up to you. The idea here is to give a nice relaxing experience, with calm music and a simple playstyle, creating art along your way as your probe leaves a trail and the planets follow their orbit.

Controlling Voyager is quite a simple process; point your mouse and click in the direction you want your thrusters to go, however, the thruster isn’t your only way of moving. With the aid of gravity from planets and the sun, you’ll notice using them both simultaneously is beneficial. Although this works great, it can make navigating a little challenging. For example, there were times when I notice a new planet close to me and I tried so hard the thrust towards it, but the gravitational pull from the sun and other planets was too great.

After finishing your initial voyage you’ll have access to other levels, including a supernova and black hole, each containing 8 levels to complete. This isn’t the only way to play, with Voyager offering you a couple of other modes, Endless and Couch Us. These are quite simple on their own, not offering a whole lot more depth to the game, just a couple of alternative ways to play.

Endless mode allows you to fly freely in a system without returning to the menu or continuing once you’ve found all the planets, of course, while relaxing to the music endlessly. As for Couch Us, which is the multiplayer option, you’ll be required to have a gamepad connected to allow for a second player to join, and you’ll compete to get the most planets first. These two modes will only unlock once you’ve played through the game once.

Graphically, the game is minimalistic but easy on the eyes. As you fly through the various systems, you create some art with the trail of Voyager, which combines with the planet’s orbit paths and the glow from the sun. A neat little thing is flying through the sun. I thought I was going to fail and have to restart, but instead, it creates a nice little splash effect coming out of it.

Music is the main focus of Voyager, with an original soundtrack filled with Lofi music giving you a really relaxing experience. I did notice there was an option to switch to slightly upbeat music that helped to bring more colour to the game and brought things to life a little bit more, but it would have been nice to have an option for some extra sound effects, such as the thrusters on Voyager, or maybe even a slight ambient crackling from the sun.

Voyager is a rather short experience as a whole, but the journey is really only as short as you make it. You might find yourself just relaxing to the music as you fly aimlessly, or creating an artistic masterpiece in Endless mode. It was a very relaxing experience, and it could just be the right calming and simple escape you are looking for.

Written by: MrVibeAU