The Solus Project
I like a little palette cleanser of a game now and then. The Solus Project was up for sale on Steam and seemed interesting enough to give a try. Overall, it's not a bad experience, though perhaps not so much of a game in a lot of ways. I think it qualifies as "walking simulator" as much as anything, presenting a mystery of sorts in a hostile environment.
Earth is destroyed by the passage of a rogue star. Mankind lives on in a fleet looking for a new home. You play someone in one of the scout ships that crashes on what may be one of the last viable worlds. So the fleet is hoping to hear from you to know if they can settle the world, while you're trying to survive, find out what happened previously, and construct a communication tower to send a signal back.
I expected a bit more of the survival elements, but really once you gather a few supplies in the beginning, it's not difficult to move forward from one habitable spot to the next without using much, if any, of the food and water you're carrying along. Environmental hazards are a bigger deal - I managed to avoid hypothermia, dehydration, and tornadoes, but the random meteor showers got me a couple times. Along the way, the game becomes more about minor puzzles and following historical records of the sentients that clearly inhabited the world before. There's no fighting and few threats beyond the environment, but the breadcrumbs of story along the way were enough to keep me curious and thoughtful, so it wasn't bad as a journey.
Mind you, I did find myself suffering motion sickness early on (which has only really happened to me in Minecraft before I turned off the head bob feature). Increasing the field of view setting from 90 to 110 seemed to resolve that, thankfully.
The ending felt appropriately, if bittersweet. The so-called Sky Ones are no altruistic and have no qualms about baiting in the remains of humanity as potential test subjects for... whatever they're hoping to learn in connection to the Ancients. It sort of implies the cycle is starting anew with what happened before.
There are some things that really feel they don't make much sense, though. What the heck is up with...
... the creepy, following dolls and dead things tracking your movement?
... the Tlaloc being all tied up and threatening only to be released and go freeze to death or something?
... the Sky Ones showing the player the star map with a presumed-better destination, but not letting him/her pass that info on to the fleet?
... all the traps? Really, who were those set for? Saw blades and false floors on the way into a shrine? Sheesh!
Earth is destroyed by the passage of a rogue star. Mankind lives on in a fleet looking for a new home. You play someone in one of the scout ships that crashes on what may be one of the last viable worlds. So the fleet is hoping to hear from you to know if they can settle the world, while you're trying to survive, find out what happened previously, and construct a communication tower to send a signal back.
I expected a bit more of the survival elements, but really once you gather a few supplies in the beginning, it's not difficult to move forward from one habitable spot to the next without using much, if any, of the food and water you're carrying along. Environmental hazards are a bigger deal - I managed to avoid hypothermia, dehydration, and tornadoes, but the random meteor showers got me a couple times. Along the way, the game becomes more about minor puzzles and following historical records of the sentients that clearly inhabited the world before. There's no fighting and few threats beyond the environment, but the breadcrumbs of story along the way were enough to keep me curious and thoughtful, so it wasn't bad as a journey.
Mind you, I did find myself suffering motion sickness early on (which has only really happened to me in Minecraft before I turned off the head bob feature). Increasing the field of view setting from 90 to 110 seemed to resolve that, thankfully.
The ending felt appropriately, if bittersweet. The so-called Sky Ones are no altruistic and have no qualms about baiting in the remains of humanity as potential test subjects for... whatever they're hoping to learn in connection to the Ancients. It sort of implies the cycle is starting anew with what happened before.
There are some things that really feel they don't make much sense, though. What the heck is up with...
... the creepy, following dolls and dead things tracking your movement?
... the Tlaloc being all tied up and threatening only to be released and go freeze to death or something?
... the Sky Ones showing the player the star map with a presumed-better destination, but not letting him/her pass that info on to the fleet?
... all the traps? Really, who were those set for? Saw blades and false floors on the way into a shrine? Sheesh!
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