‘Voidling Bound’ Review: Spacelanders

InnovationGaming‘Voidling Bound’ Review: SpacelandersByMitch Wallace,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about video games, technology and pop culture.for Forbes Games ReviewsFollow AuthorJun 09, 2026, 09:00am EDTVoidling BoundCredit: Hatchery GamesAs soon as I read that ex-Skylanders developers were working on a creature-raising indie game called Voidling Bound, I was interested. While Skylanders admittedly became a sort of consumerist hellscape by the end of its very successful toys-to-life run with 2016’s excellent Skylanders: Imaginators, I always enjoyed the actual games themselves, admittedly. In a broad genre sense, I guess you could call them accessible dungeon crawlers, with seriously high production value, pumped with Activision’s AAA funding, of course. The developers, Toys For Bob, were and are a great studio and did great work on those family-friendly titles. Shout-out to the new Spyro game they’re currently making, by the way. And also, I think Skylanders deserves a modern comeback, though Voidling Bound has been scratching some of that itch for me this past week, at least.Voidling BoundCredit: Hatchery GamesThat said, Voidling Bound shares some noticeable DNA with the Skylanders franchise (and Borderlands, too). That’s expected, given Canada-based Hatchery Game’s pedigree. In the studio’s premiere independent game, you play the role of a nameless and faceless Space Wrangler, and through your ship’s advanced transfer technology, you routinely and psychologically bind yourself (get it?) to organisms called Voidlings. It’s sort of like Avatar in that way, where your consciousness gets transferred to these strange creatures, and then you take said strange creatures on numerous terrestrial adventures. Skylanders in space, I’d call it, without all the plastic, and a touch more complexity. Although, to be fair, I’d love some Voidling Bound NFC figures, rampant consumerism be damned.Play Puzzles & Game...