Void Bastards has an excellent name, and you can say it without your Mom smacking you because, hey Mom, that’s its name, right?* Beyond that, though, what is this game about?

It’s about 12 to 15 hours for starters. Void Bastards is designed by Blue Manchu and Jonathan Chey, a co-founder of Irrational Games who directed System Shock 2 and BioShock. The game is a strategy shooter, and the cel-shaded, comic-booky design comports well with the mischievous tone of the story.

In Void Bastards, players are basically boarding and raiding space ships using a variety of “misfit prisoners” for the jobs, all of them having specialities that are either right or wrong for the job. Blue Manchu positions the game as a strategy shooter. Players will have to assign tasks to their motley crew and be prepared to flee, fight, or be a bastard and jettison an enemy into space.

Yesterday Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program announced it will make a same-day launch on Xbox Game Pass in the coming year. Void Bastards is published by Humble Bundle and will also launch on Steam when it arrives.

*—This reminds me, in 1993 I was an intern at The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer (then the Observer-Times) and the Butthole Surfers came to town to play a show. Our entertainment section, on orders from the publisher, had to refer to them as “The Surfers” in the concert review.