VHOLUME

VHOLUME opens on Robert, standing in a stone intersection in a brutalist city, with one bureaucratic errand ahead of him: restoring his family’s annulled food stamps. Getting there means running, sliding, and wall-jumping across some of the most fluid first-person parkour currently available, all in service of paperwork.

Robert’s Bureaucratic Mission

The premise sounds almost comically mundane, but VHOLUME plays that contrast completely straight, sending Robert through the crumbling capital under the control of an entity known only as the Ministry. Every checkpoint along the way is staffed by a clay-faced bureaucrat demanding invisible paperwork before letting you proceed, and the visual design of these characters draws consistent praise from players specifically for how strange and memorable they manage to be despite their purely functional role.

Movement That Rewards Commitment

Running, jumping, wall-running, sliding, and crouching form the complete movement toolkit, and the design philosophy behind VHOLUME is built around never punishing forward momentum — picking a direction and committing fully is almost always the right call, even at speeds that feel reckless on a first attempt. Beginners tend to hesitate at gaps and ledges, when trusting the game’s generous movement window and simply leaping produces smoother, faster runs than cautious pathing ever does.

B Sides and Hidden Secrets

Beyond the main path through each level, VHOLUME hides B Side challenges accessible through secret rooms and hidden items that grant new traversal abilities. Kreedz, one specific B Side level, has become something of a lightning rod in the community — some players call it deliberately, almost punishingly frustrating, while others have come around to defending it as a genuinely clever test of the core movement system once you’ve learned its particular demands.

Ghosts, Weekly Levels, and Community Content

Competitive players race against ghosts of other runners’ completed attempts, chasing leaderboard positions on a rotating weekly level that resets the competition regularly. Steam Workshop support means the community keeps producing new content beyond what VHOLUME ships with, extending the game’s replay value well past its core campaign.

What Speedrunners Focus On

Dedicated speedrunners chain sliding bunny-hops together to maintain speed through sections that would otherwise force a full stop, treating each checkpoint less as a rest point and more as an obstacle to clear without losing momentum.

How difficult is Kreedz compared to the rest of the game?

It’s widely considered one of the hardest B Side levels in VHOLUME, deliberately designed to force players to engage with the core movement mechanics in unconventional ways rather than relying on habits built up during the main campaign.

Do I need to play with friends, or does VHOLUME work solo?

Solo play covers the full experience, including all main levels and B Sides, though multiplayer allows friends to tackle levels together for a more social take on the same movement-focused core.

VHOLUME earns its melancholic reputation by never letting Robert’s mundane bureaucratic mission undercut the joy of actually moving through the world the Ministry built — between chasing ghosts on the weekly level and hunting down every B Side hidden in the city, there’s a real chance you’ll forget entirely that this all started over some annulled food stamps.