Let’s Look At: Voxelstein 3D

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Voxelstein 3D is a single map project centered around creating an experience entirely in voxels. It is themed around the iconic 90’s title called Wolfenstein 3D featuring many of its sound effects, weapons, and enemies, yet incorporates its own identity. Starting up the game, we will find ourselves detained in a cell with nothing but a knife. A key aspect of this title is that everything is destructible, so we must start hacking away at the cell’s bars to earn our freedom and be allowed to explore the rest of the level.

In the next-door over, you’ll find a nazi with his back turned to you. After we backstab him, we obtain our first gun from him in the form of a pistol. This allows us to defend ourselves in case we run into any more of them while exploring the mansion we find ourselves caged in. It is a two-story house and has quite a few rooms to explore. You will be rewarded for doing so in the form of more ammo, items, or even a chaingun.

The level is chock full of references, memes, and edgy humor. It does not take itself seriously at all, so that in turn makes it pretty fun to look in every nook & cranny to discover what other wacky things you’ll find. The exit to the level isn’t very far from where you start. You just need to smack down a wooden door in the nazi throne room and go outside to freedom. There are only nine enemies in the entire level too, so it isn’t exactly an action-packed romp if that is what you were expecting. The joy of exploration really is key to the experience, alongside destroying the heck out of the environments for your own amusement.

Even at the low resolution of 320×200, this is still rather good looking. Not only that, this has both a ton of detail & diversity. No two rooms are the same, everything was carefully handcrafted in these chunky voxels to reflect the author’s vision. The destructible nature also opens up some interesting gameplay options. For one, you can carve a hole in the environment instead of blindly turning a corner, as to shoot your enemy through it. There are also some C4 charges you can use to quickly blow up large chunks of the environment. Perfect for taking out locked doors.

Your other weapon, aside from the C4, Pistol, and Chain-gun, will be a grenade. They are not very useful, to be honest, and it doesn’t damage the environments. Well, unless you punch a hole from the second floor and drop it on a nazi’s head. In that case, it is definitely better and more entertaining than just shooting him. Unlike Wolf 3D, this uses the modern WASD keys to move and the mouse to freely aim. The E key will be used to open doors and activate things, while the Space-bar is to jump.

This is still pretty taxing on your PC despite being from 2008. All those fully destructible voxels are quite a demanding thing. There are precisely 37455800 voxels making up the world, and you are scored at the end based on how many you’ve destroyed, alongside the enemies you’ve killed and the secrets found. It will be quite a feat to actually pull that off considering that amount is so large it nearly looks like a phone number. That is more of a gag than anything, I can’t imagine anyone actually doing that. In before someone takes that as a challenge >_>

In total, I spent around an hour rummaging through this mansion to see what I could find and making good use of the freedom granted with a completely destructible environment. Voxelstein 3D is such an interesting part of gaming history. It, to this day, makes me yearn for a game to use voxels this small and incorporating Red Faction like gameplay. The closest we have gotten so far is Ace of Spades with its massive Minecraft like voxels. Another worthy mention is 7 Days to Die. It is an exciting prospect to have this much freedom in a game. Voxelstein 3D is more tech demo than game, but man, is it an incredible piece of work from one man. It is a free download, so if anything in this blog post sounded interesting to you, be sure to give it a go.

Link to download: Voxelstein 3D

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