Voidwood casts you and up to three friends as children lost deep in the woods. By day you venture out to scavenge supplies and craft tools, constantly weighing whether to push deeper for better rewards or turn back while you still can. At nightfall, the forest calls in something that hunts you.
It’s the debut from Santa Barbara Games, a small indie team self-publishing on Steam, and it’s targeting a 2027 release.
Two Halves of the Same Forest
Explore, scavenge supplies and craft tools. Warm light, vivid colour and open paths draw you further in — and every step deeper is time you won’t have on the way back.
The forest calls in The Beast, an apex predator that cannot be stopped, only survived. Twisted creatures prowl. You hide, flee, and try to find the way out together.
The daylight half is doing something sly. Santa Barbara Games describe the stylised setting as designed to disarm players before it threatens them — the inviting palette and open paths aren’t just art direction, they’re bait. The game wants you comfortable enough to overextend.
That’s a smarter framing than most survival horror manages. The tension doesn’t come from the environment looking dangerous; it comes from it looking safe right up until it isn’t, and from you having made a series of small reasonable decisions that added up to being too far from camp.
Your Voice Keeps You Alive — and Gives You Away
Games built on this idea tend to generate their best moments organically — whispered plans, panicked shouting, and the specific comedy of somebody giving away the group’s position at the worst possible moment. If the spatial audio is as central as the studio suggests, that’s where Voidwood’s identity will live.
Every Escape Feeds the Next Run
Progression carries between attempts. What you manage to carry out of the forest becomes camp upgrades, new tools and new strategies — the kind of meta-loop designed to keep a squad saying “one more run” long after they meant to stop.
Built for friend groups, with proximity chat as the primary coordination tool rather than an optional extra.
Gather supplies and build tools by day, deciding how deep into the woods the risk is worth taking.
An apex predator that cannot be killed — only outlasted, avoided and escaped.
Everything you extract feeds back into your base, unlocking tools and strategies for the next attempt.
Who’s Making It
That’s a notable set of backgrounds for a debut indie team, and it lends some weight to the technical ambitions here — spatial audio done well is genuinely difficult, and it’s the system the whole design rests on.
Voidwood is available to wishlist on Steam now, with release planned for 2027. If you’re heading to PAX West, Booth #744 is the only place to play it.
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