Volume Reviews
Fun, not-too-hard stealth puzzles that look great, wrapped up in a humdrum story with a boring protagonist.
Volume may suffer from a few issues of poorly designed AI and easily exploited level design, but I still found a great number of challenging rooms with an intriguing story to match, and plenty of room to master. The added bonus of being able to show how to complete a room by livestreaming a game about streaming how to complete a room… is just icing on the meta cake.
Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell bypasses the difficult second album hurdle with a simple, elegant and carefully paced stealth puzzler.
An enjoyable homage to old school Metal Gear Solid, but a lack of challenge and an overbearing story means it isn't quite a stealth classic in its own right.
An expertly crafted game that boasts stylish, nigh-endless permutations of a simple, engrossing form of stealth.
A satisfying and exciting experience from start to finish
Volume has anger to go with its beauty and wit
Volume's tight mechanics, smart visual vocabulary, and level-editing tools combine to create something that is as much a puzzle game as it is a stealth title.
An inventive stealth game that strips the genre down to its basics.
Volume is not a bad game. But it still leaves me wanting for something more out of it.
Coming off the back of Thomas Was Alone, Volume is a much more ambitious and expansive project, and there's little sign of this being a difficult second album. It can miss the mark in a few areas, depending on how you play, but this is a clever distillation of the classic stealth genre wrapped up in an excellent retelling of a classic English legend.
Volume is a fantastic experience that I highly recommend to any stealth-game lovers. It's a unique twist on the Robin Hood story, and while the game's main storyline might not have been as strong as I hoped, I think it is definitely a great follow-up to Bithell's success with Thomas Was Alone.
A mostly well designed, methodically thought out puzzler that ends up being too easy due to early checkpoint issues.
Early-game issues aside, Volume is an entertaining and addictive mix of Metal Gear Solid and Trials.
In many of the later [missions], bigger and more multi-path, I was reacting instinctively, taking risks and having them pay off, finding a groove. There was flow and joyfulness. The good game at the heart of all the frequently irritating bluster and padding shines through.
[T]he atmosphere, voice acting and plot had me coming back for more even when the puzzles overwhelmed me.
Volume is not perfect, but it is a relentlessly fun, interesting and engrossing stealth game that looks to have legs thanks to an excellently simple level creator.
Mike Bithell has done it again. Volume is an incredibly entertaining and smart stealth puzzler that will test your brain, even if it doesn't challenge it too much. It's a simple, but extremely effective game that will pose questions in an appealing story without forcing an answer on you. There's an extremely easy to use but effective level creator included to add hours of gameplay through playing through other fun, user-created levels.
Really cool art and a great score pair to ensure that Mike Bithell's latest is worth a shout – but we'd advise proceeding with caution, because there are still kinks to be worked out.
At times, Volume may fly too close to its Metal Gear Solid roots - creator Mike Bithell has unashamedly noted 1998's stealth 'em up as a distinct source of inspiration - but what it lacks in immediate originality, aesthetically at least, it makes up for in innovative, engaging, and challenging level design. To brand this a clone would be more criminal than Gisborne's corporatocratic rule.