#PGCHelsinki: Void of Heroes is a multiplayer mech shooter spin-off of Tunnel Ground

Void of Heroes is a multiplayer mech shooter based on the Tunnel Ground franchise. It's basically the same relationship Shadowgun shares with Deadzone. They're standalone but one offers the single player component while the other is multiplayer-only.

There's only one arena to battle in right now and it's not particularly striking visually. If you've ever been in the bowels of a futuristic space ship or played a shooter with a primarily brown or grey colour palette then you know exactly what to expect here.

That being said, there are some impressive lighting and particle effects - particularly when your mech meets its inevitable, explosive end.

There's a vast range of customisation options available. You can choose between several mechs, pilots, and suits - all of which come with their own set of skills that you can switch between.

Each skill has either an active or passive effect or both. In latter's case you'll be able to activate that skill in battle for a big short-term boost but lose your passive skill temporarily.

The whole skill system is incredibly deep and allows for a multitude of builds to be created and shared by a potential community.

However, Void of Heroes does suffer in the gameplay department. You control movement using invisible analog sticks, with your left thumb controlling movement and the right where you look.

It's nice in theory but incredibly unresponsive. Your first reaction is to hold your right thumb on the screen and slide to look around. That won't work here. It's both hypersensitive and unresponsive and, as a result, is near impossible to keep track of.

Instead, you resort to flicking your thumb on the screen which is incredibly imprecise. Thankfully, your opponent's hitbox is large - they're massive mechs, after all - but some fine-tuning is desperately needed.

The shooting itself is You shoot automatically as soon as the crosshairs hover over a mech and reload once you've run out of bullets. It's a decent system that ensures the screen isn't covered by annoying virtual buttons.

The skill buttons are located on the top right of the screen. A simple tap should have sufficed to activate your skill but, again, it's unresponsive and requires a few hammering taps to activate when in battle.

When you finish a battle you're rewarded with in-game currency used to purchase upgrades for your mech. This currency can also be purchased in the in-game store though, so if you want an upgrade a little sooner you can drop real cash.

As mentioned earlier, Void of Heroes is entirely multiplayer, and contains three game modes: DeathMatch, Team DeathMatch, and Base Capture. They're pretty standard for a shooter so you've likely seen them all before.

It's six versus six which feels about right given the size of the arena. New arenas are going to have to be introduced to prevent boredom from setting in a little early though.

Void of Heroes has potential. There's a wealth of customisation options, impressive particle and lighting effects, and great community appeal.

However, the unresponsive controls and uninspired level design prevent it from being quite there yet and much more polish is required.

It's out right now in the Amazon Appstore [download] but is heading to Google Play soon. There's also potential for an iOS version at some point but nothing is confirmed as of yet. We'll keep you posted.