Enter the Void | Community Puzzle Spotlight

What began with a solo puzzle jam entry in May 2025, gradually evolved into a full-fledged campaign effort, and with time into a collaborative project, involving Elyon and Nazario92 as original testers, and later Darky, the “lead goater” and data-miner, whose discoveries provided new design possibilities, or even enabled completely new puzzle mechanics. Creator Mr_Pipicz first released Stronghold Jam for the Connectorless PuzzleJam, then gradually built upon it, leading to the first release of Enter the Void. As of now, the project comprises Hub World: Desolate Lighthouse, World A: Island Stronghold, World B: Coastal Villa, and a recent addition, World C: Mountain Fortress.

Mr_Pipicz is the project’s sole puzzle designer and world creator, always carefully planning the world layout and sketching puzzles on paper to achieve a natural flow before building everything directly in the editor. Each world concludes with a terminal progressing the story and containing entries that share behind-the-scenes insights into puzzle concepts and development.

The campaign currently offers 24 sigils, 9 stars, and countless secrets across four richly crafted worlds. Puzzles are snappy and focused, echoing the design philosophy of the puzzles from the original games, as well as custom old-school TTP campaigns such as Rebirth or Outfall. They emphasize compact ideas, thoughtful use of verticality, and do not necessarily rely on strict grid layouts.

Aesthetics and atmosphere are major focal points of Enter the Void. Through patient world building and meticulous detail, the worlds offer plenty of opportunities for exploration and are filled with handcrafted environmental set pieces – e.g., a raft, a trebuchet, a guillotine, various custom statues, a ski jump, or a large Christmas tree that can be activated as part of a meta puzzle.

If you are looking for the perfect Christmas puzzle experience, this is the campaign for you. Subscribe, take your time exploring, and be sure to stay a while and read the basement chat with Yasen.

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BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN

⚪Hey folks, I’m really happy to have you both in the basement today, welcome! So, the story of Enter the Void began with a puzzle jam entry. At what point did you realize it could grow into a full campaign rather than remain a small standalone project?

Mr_Pipicz: Hello there, thanks for having us! I guess this is a question for me. :-) I think I realized this about halfway into the creation process of Stronghold Jam.

I've always loved The Talos Principle, and I've always loved creating maps for games – the most important one being the classic Doom. Although I had never tried the Serious Editor in the olden days, I had been carrying some puzzle ideas in my head for a long time. And then, when I opened the editor in Reawakened, very soon I realized that I will not stop at this puzzle jam entry. When I get enthusiastic about something, I tend to take it... rather seriously. :-)

I poured a lot of time, effort, and love into Stronghold Ja m, and the result got way bigger than I had originally expected – and besides the five main puzzles, it already contained plenty of cool features and world-building. So it was a great stepping stone to build upon.

⚪After Stronghold Jam’s success, how did early testers like Elyon and Nazario92 become involved through Discord playthroughs, and how did Darky’s technical discoveries help shape later expansions such as the snowy World C?

Mr_Pipicz: Elyon reached out to me after the release of Stronghold Jam, and very soon, I also got acquainted with his brother, Nazario92. The brothers' shared love for Talos, their puzzle-solving skills, and knowledge of the game mechanics were unparalleled. We started a chat room on Discord and discussed everything Talos-related, and as I was working on the Hub World and World B, I started sharing screenshots of my creative endeavors with them. Quite naturally, they became testers of early iterations of Enter the Void. What a pleasure it was to hop on a voice chat on Discord and watch their streams as they were going through my worlds and my puzzles. :-)

Getting in touch with Darky was quite similar, only it happened later, after I released the initial version of Enter the Void. I was amazed by appreciation and dedication of some community members, and among those, Darky was the most enthusiastic one. He started flooding the comment section of Enter the Void on Steam with waves of comments about exploring the worlds, how he managed to cheese which puzzle, and of course about "mountain goats".

Darky and I started talking, and thus, our cooperation began. Seeing his ardor was very uplifting, and soon we started consulting various adjustments and improvements to gameplay and World B environment. Sometimes Darky's overly enthusiastic nagging was a little bothersome, but I humbly admit that a lot of his suggestions turned out to be pretty good – for example, the World B's via ferrata leading from the coastline behind B2: Carousel to the "Pantheon of Goats" at the mountaintop.

During these discussions, we realized we shared common acquaintances in Elyon and Nazario92. We soon all talked together, and not long after, Darky invited Shlam as well, and then dubbed our little chat group "Expedition Crew" as a homage to The Talos Principle 2.

As time went by, I was slowly building World C, and Darky was digging in the game files in search of additional actors and meshes that could be used in this emergent world. Darky learned how to data-mine the game assets, which significantly expanded the palette of available decoration items that I could use. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to extract snowy cliffs, which would have been amazing for World C, but I managed with the single snowy mesh available in the editor, the almighty Tundra Rock.

And later, something even better happened – Darky got a brilliant idea how he might be able to scale various non-mesh actors. And lo and behold, it worked! This discovery led to resized burning torches, switches, sigils, and even resized clones. This was a complete gamechanger for the Expedition Crew as it enabled some previously unseen puzzle mechanics, such as World C's purple sigil puzzle featuring Sl1ms0 and F4ts0. Darky was delighted to see how I used his resized assets, and even though it is optional, I myself consider that puzzle (and the whole concept and the environmental storytelling) one of the highlights of World C – and it cracks me up to this day. :-)

⚪Darky, from your perspective as a player, what drew you so strongly to Enter the Void that you ended up getting involved behind the scenes?

DarkyPL: Thanks for having me, Yasen, and greetings to all friends I've made during my community shenanigans!

I've always been an avid Serious Sam and The Talos Principle player since the very first releases, so after finishing In the Beginning DLC, I was craving for more. So I looked at community puzzles, and among vast amounts of boxy ones, a few stood out that had this balanced mixture of aesthetics, puzzles, and lore. I started with Cliffside, Raphael's Dominion, and my beloved Let's Break Talos Principle 2: Your Turn, which showed me what the community is capable of! It gave me more skills and pushed me to be active with feedback in comments as a reward for the time spent by the creators. That way, I became involved as a tester and goater to various authors such as Nazario92, Shlam's Shlam Packed, Rezonance, and Belbeb's The Islands saga.

I noticed Enter the Void on the release date due to the use of neon purple and blue title in the thumbnail. After launching it, I was amazed by the intro, which reminded me of BioShock – that was also my first comment about EtV. Upon seeing those cliffs in Hub World, I just had to start goating about exploring the levels for about 5 hours before getting to breaking the puzzles, leaving feedback along the way. It struck me with numerous Easter eggs, handcrafted Talos QTs, funny QRs, the trebucket [sic!], and the architecture. In return, Mr_Pipicz created statues of goats for me and my dottis, yay! Then we started calls on Discord to talk about cheese-proofing the puzzles, but I consider nudging Mr_Pipicz to design the via ferrata in World B to be the turning point in this collaboration.

I'm not a mapper but I've got a background in IT, old-school programming, and system integrations, so I wanted to apply my skills to provide Mr_Pipicz with other assets from the game, especially destructible wooden planks and dunes, which I found but couldn't import. It took me quite some time but I've managed to gather all blueprint assets, found a way to scale every type of actor, and posted them as Useful Shenanigans - Creator Assets in the Workshop along with a self-titled guide for other creators. Of course, we kept some findings to ourselves (e.g. scaled clones) to be first used in Enter the Void (Sl1mS0/F4tS0 puzzle) and in Shlam's The Fantabulous Matter Resizer.

We also started having design brainstorming sessions about World C: Mountain Fortress almost everyday and I came up with a lot of goating opportunities, which Mr_Pipicz implemented, adapting them to the snowy World C – and those are also loved by my goating daughters!

For me the collaboration is quite similar to how the expedition crew in Talos 2 had to work together to achieve something greater.

⚪Is there anything about Enter the Void or the collaboration around it that you want to highlight that we haven’t covered yet?

Mr_Pipicz: Considering how ambitious a project Enter the Void has grown into, everything simply cannot be handled by just one person. Darky, Elyon, Nazario92 – each of them has a unique skillset and perspective, which has contributed significantly to what Enter the Void is today.

DarkyPL: We're also eagerly awaiting further updates to the editor so that the upcoming World D could receive proper mesh treatment. :-)

Be brave, create, and collaborate!

Check out other works of The Expedition Crew

Demo Reawakened series

The Islands series

Shlam Packed

⚪For the finale, as always, feel free to give a shout out to anyone who helped along the way or share any final thoughts.

DarkyPL: I would like to thank community members who were very supportive during the entire process, every one of them helped in some way, shout out to: Shlam, Nazario92, Qoqqi, Belbeb, Elyon, TonyRacoon, Benzolamps, inZKa, VIKtor, Neiser, Luraman, Ragnarock, Dayo, MA, KabanFriends, Resonλnce, Kleinba, v0rtex2002, and Kirena-Kaya!

Mr_Pipicz: Well, I think Darky has already managed to thank everyone. :-D But just in case, if you are curious, feel free to take a look at the very first terminal you encounter in Enter the Void Hub World: Desolate Lighthouse.

To conclude, it’s been a long journey so far, and it is still far from over. World D is currently in the making, and later, there will also be the fabled World E – and perhaps, you will finally get to meet the mysterious individual known as Luc1f3r. There is yet more to come, so stay tuned!

Both: Thank you for having the chat with us, Yasen, and thank you all for enjoying Enter the Void. And finally, on behalf of the whole Expedition Crew, we would like to wish everyone Happy Holidays. See you in 2026! :-)