Guides › Scene guides
The Void: Flying Through the Asteroid Storm
The forest ends in a black hole, and the black hole spits you out somewhere with no ground at all. Welcome to the Void: a starfield, a drifting nebula, a hard white sun and, for the next thousand metres, rocks. Your afterburner turns into a thruster flame with an ion trail behind it to suit the occasion, but nothing about the driving changes — same keys, same steering, same 300 km/h. What changes is the hazard. For the first time in the run, the things that can kill you are moving on their own, and they are not all coming from in front.
The Void at a glance
| Starts | 5,000 m, through the black hole at the end of the Forest |
|---|---|
| Ends | About 6,000 m, through a wormhole into Metropolis 2126 |
| The field | Open space, wider than the forest field. Lit beacon posts mark its edges; faint rows of runway lights below you run down the middle and either side of it. |
| What moves | Asteroids — from straight ahead and from both front corners, each on a fixed diagonal course, tumbling as they come |
| What kills you | Any asteroid, whatever its size |
| Difficulty phase | Terminal Velocity, at the 300 km/h top speed; Impossible waits in the 2126 city beyond the wormhole |
| Close calls | Every rock you slip past closely counts |
What is out there
Most of what you see in the Void is set dressing, and it is worth learning which part that is so your eyes stop flinching at it. Fine dust streaks past the car and stretches into lines as you speed up. A ringed gas giant hangs off to one side. Far out on both flanks drift pieces of weathered hardware, and now and then a lit rocket. Every so often the scene puts on a set piece: a docking ring you fly straight through the middle of, a shipyard gantry with a half-built hull and welding sparks, a cargo convoy under thrust, a comet dragging its tail. None of it can touch you. In the Void, only the rocks are solid.
The rocks themselves range from smaller than your car to roughly twice its width, and they spin as they fly. Ignore the spin; it is the course that matters, and the course never changes. A rock travels in a straight line from the moment it appears until it leaves the screen behind you. Size is not a guide to pace, either: some rocks drift in lazily and others close on you much faster than your own speed would suggest.
Reading rocks instead of traffic
Traffic is dangerous because of what it might decide to do: a car signals and takes the lane you were aiming for. A rock decides nothing. It was either on a collision course the moment it appeared or it wasn't, and you can tell which by watching it rather than guessing at intentions.
Sailors have a rule for this, and it works in the chase camera: if another vessel's bearing stays steady while the distance shrinks, you are on a collision course. On your screen, a rock that holds its place while it grows is coming for you. A rock that slides sideways across the view as it approaches is going to pass. The rule assumes you hold your line, so read it again after every move you make.
The other difference is where things come from. Traffic in the first scenes mostly appears at the far end of the road. Here, plenty of rocks come in from the front corners of the field on long diagonals, and the closer you sit to an edge, the less of that corner you can see — which is why the how-to-play guide tells you to stay off the edges. And unlike the forest, where a gap stays a gap, gaps here open and close as rocks cross each other's paths. A space that looks free half a second ahead may not be free when you get there.
How to fly it
- Live in the middle. Use the runway lights under the car as your reference. From the centre you see both corners and can slide either way.
- Pass behind crossing rocks, not in front of them. A rock crossing from left to right is moving out of the space it has just passed through. Steer towards where it came from and you slip through its wake; try to beat it across and you are racing it to a spot it will reach first.
- Make small moves and re-scan. The usual way to die in the Void is to dodge one rock squarely into the path of another. Move only as far as the threat demands, then check what your new position is lined up with.
- Know the shape of the storm. It opens with breathing room after the black hole, then grows thicker and faster for most of the scene. The densest stretch is roughly 5,800 to 5,900 m; after that the field thins a little through the wormhole's approach.
- Coins help less here than in the forest. A coin still takes speed off, and rocks launched after it come at you a little slower, but they keep coming just as often, and the ones already in flight keep their pace. Take a coin that sits on your line; never cross the field for one.
- Charge the shield on the early rocks, spend it at the peak. Every rock you slip past closely charges the meter one notch, and the thin opening of the storm is the calmest place to collect them. A ghost is worth most in the densest stretch. When the car starts to blink, steer for open space: a rock can drift into you just as you turn solid.
Arriving, and leaving a century later
You arrive blind. The black hole at the end of the Forest takes the wheel, pulls the car to the centre and swallows the screen; a flash later you are in open space with the thrusters burning and a moment of quiet before the first rocks arrive.
The exit is announced well in advance. Around 6,000 m a swirling blue-white wormhole rises over the far end of the field and spins up as you close on it. The rocks keep flying while it grows, so keep dodging until the cold white light covers the screen. Then the wormhole takes over: the car is drawn to the centre and the year counter on the dash starts to climb. Where that ends up is Metropolis 2126, and whether any of it is possible is a question for the science page.
It is worth saying that real space is far kinder than this. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is mostly empty, and spacecraft have crossed it many times without having to dodge anything. The Void is a storm built for a car with no brakes, and the run's last stretch of open flying before the black hole finale asks for the same skills again, ten kilometres in.
Void questions
How do you survive the asteroids in Brakeless?
Stay near the middle, watch which rocks hold still on your screen while they grow, and pass behind the ones that are crossing. Small moves, then look again.
Can you crash into the space station in the Void?
No. The docking ring, the shipyard, the convoys and the comet are all scenery, and you fly straight through the ring. Only asteroids can end the run here.
What happens at 6,000 m in Brakeless?
A wormhole at the end of the Void carries the run a hundred years forward. You come out on the city street you started on, in the year 2126, with hover traffic waiting.
← Previous: The Forest · All guides · Next: Metropolis 2126 →