vholume and ludoenvironmental dissonance
2026-08-29
the brothers Lemaitre have authored some of my favorite games of this decade – the enchanting city-block imsim BABBDI which would make Warren Spector foam at the mouth, and the mesmerizing STRAFTAT, the best multiplayer shooter this side of Quake. so when one of them teams up with a bunch of other folk and releases a new game, i sit up and listen.
VHOLUME is a first person parkour-em-up set in a bleak dystopia made of concrete and rust. it is also a game fundamentally at odds with itself. the movement, the verbs, the level design – all of it wants you to go fast. it wants you to zoom through the concrete brutopia like a magnificent stallion with magnificent blinders, focused only on the path ahead of you, on reaching the goal as fast as you can, faster than the ghost you see running ahead of you, faster than the par times, faster than the developers, faster faster FASTER.
but it also wants you to stop. it wants you to look at these marvelous megastructures, to feel small and insignificant as you listen to the howling wind and tilt your head back, unable to even imagine how and where they end. it wants you to veer off the track and find the little weirdos hiding out in the nooks and crannies of the megalopolis, talk to them, scrutinize them, imagine their weird little lives.
it gives you the tools to explore this weird, lonely concrete sprawl but encourages you not to use them. it teases you with goregous vistas but goads you into ignoring them in favor of getting a HIGH SCORE.
it is a game of contradictions and i‘m not sure whether i love or hate it for it.