Voices Of The Void

If aliens are watching, I hope they can't see the state of my bedroom. Voices Of The Void is a job sim about being a lonely engineer in a remote signals laboratory, pointing big satellites at the sky in the search for extraterrestrial life. You are like Jodi Foster in Contact, except less qualified. It is extremely my cup of hot tea. It is also about living in a disgusting dormitory full of cockroaches.

I spent the first hours in this surprisingly complex and funny sim not pressing buttons on the old analogue machinery required to do my job, but instead sweeping up years of rubbish that had piled up in the abandoned lab before I took over. Chinese takeaway cartons, bottles, fried circuit boards, busted keyboards, indeterminate pulp. If the little grey men do send a message, I might miss it. I am busy scrubbing the toilet.

You arrive to the lab in the dead of night, your first task to simply go around switching on the lights in every room. You read the emails waiting for you on the computer running on the desk. Your science boss wants you to record signals from space and send the recordings to them every day on hard drives, alongside other data on a big tape reel. I ignore the emails, take a look around, find the cleaner's closet, and come back with a roll of black bin bags. I am NOT working in this absolute shit hole until I have at least cleaned up my desk.