Buy The Solus Project

The survival game tends to abide by a few key ideas and mechanics. Basic human functions like sleeping, eating and drinking are necessary if you want to explore the world. You should be able to forage for food and other items that are either important or necessary to craft something better. To survive, you're going to have to defend yourself against the elements and hostile creatures like animals or zombies. Most of all, your adventure takes place on Earth in any given time period. The Solus Project initially seems like any other survival game, but it's set on a distant planet instead of the one we inhabit. It doesn't take long before it sheds some of its survival trappings and morphs into something very different.

In the future, Earth is being destroyed by a phenomenon people knew was coming. In preparation for this, manned expeditions were sent to explore the galaxy to locate habitable planets. One of those ships was near the planet of Gliese when it was shot down by an unknown force, leaving behind one crew member who crash-landed on the planet. While the planet can support human life, it is harsh, and with supplies dwindling, your job is to find the necessary parts to build a radio tower and call for a rescue.

For the most part, the game follows some basic tenets of the survival game genre. There are items you can find everywhere that can be useful, whether it's health packs or thermoses or lead pipes. Crafting is a big part of the game as well, whether it's something simple like creating a sharp rock to cut open things or crafting a torch out of oil, a pipe and roots. While you wander around searching for parts, you'll need to take care of your hunger and thirst to ensure you don't die of starvation and dehydration, respectively. Canned food and energy packs take care of your calorie levels, but you'll soon discover that you can eat some of the plants in the world as well. The water is completely drinkable, and you can also store it in a thermos to make it portable. You'll need to factor in sleep, which should be done in covered areas so you're not rudely awoken by the elements. Finally, temperature needs to be taken into account, since wild changes in either direction can lead to more health loss via hypothermia and heatstroke.

The planet becomes one big character in the game due to its behavior throughout your journey. There's a day and night cycle, complete with the aforementioned temperature changes that affect your health. There's a tide system in place that affects which areas can be explored. Natural phenomena like earthquakes, rain and meteor showers occur at seemingly random intervals. This is in addition to the random items and journal entries from departed explorers to flesh out the backstory. Though seemingly barren, the planet remains a very interesting place to explore.

It won't take long for fans of survival games to notice that some of the other expected elements of the genre are surprisingly absent in The Solus Project. Though you can craft quite a few things, you can't build yourself any fortifications or shelter. This relegates you to sleeping in specific base camps or caves, and while that may seem like an open invitation to leaving yourself exposed to predators, you don't have to worry about that since none exist. There are some plants that move but don't otherwise bother you. No creatures are out to kill you, which is great since there's no combat system. There's also no tool degradation, so things like your torch, which normally has a finite life span, lasts forever unless you dunk it in water. Compared to other survival games, this is much easier to handle, and while that seems like it would make for a boring game, things open up once you enter your first cave.

The cave systems, which connect the different islands of the planet, are where things start to get interesting. The journal entries of the ship are now replaced with ancient carvings and writings from long-gone civilizations. You encounter beds of water and an edible green stew along with other alien foods. Relics give you some resistance to negative stats, and there are puzzles that are require some thought. You also encounter creatures that are pretty benign and traps, both natural and man-made.

The alien influence grows once you leave that cave, since every other cave and island you encounter has more alien artifacts and structures. What started off as a mission to locate parts to facilitate your rescue becomes more exploratory as you discover what happened to this civilization and why the skeletons you encountered look so familiar. You're also trying to make sense of some of the literature they left behind, which wavers between cryptic and morose. It doesn't take very long before The Solus Project transforms into a horror game around the halfway mark. There's less of a reliance on jump scares and more on gradually creating a creepy setting. Granted, there are a few times when a genuine surprise encounter occurs, but most of the time, there's ample build-up for what you're about to see, horrifying or not.

It is that mix of exploration and dread that makes the game so fascinating. The different stories and structures you discover are interesting. The broken statues and various paintings give the world even more character, and the ending is intriguing enough that there are already discussions about its interpretation. The experience is memorable, though this isn't the type of game that begs for an immediate replay.

At the same time, the initial building blocks for a survival game now become burdens once you discover the game's true nature. This is especially true as you grab more relics that hasten things like hunger and thirst. In the end, you start to hate those elements since you're carrying around stuff that starts to become less essential for progression and takes up room that should be reserved for more important objects.

Graphically, the game is quite impressive. The various islands and the cave system tend to limit what can be done as far as varied looks go, but the amount of detail in the structures and vegetation looks great. Like most games nowadays, the particle effects add to the look, as dust specs and smoke look better than what we've been given before. The lighting looks fine overall, though there are a few areas where it can wreak havoc on the edges of some objects. Overall, there's not much to complain about here.

On the sound front, the game does quite a bit with what little it has. The music is used sparingly here, as the sound effects provide most of the ambiance. When there is music, it properly sets the mood for that section. Both haunting and hopeful with a sci-fi flavor to it, the short melodies are a joy to hear. Voices, on the other hand, can be hit-and-miss. The female operator has a good sense of urgency while your personal computer's voice — male or female, depending on your initial choice — is great as a dry but effective reminder of your objectives or when you're getting dangerously low on health. On the other hand, your character remains unaffected by what's going on around him, as he seems eerily enthralled by what he sees instead of being freaked out.

In the end, The Solus Project is a fascinating game that is more about exploration than survival. Even if you aren't grabbing every scrap of paper and reading every carving, the story is gripping and the desolate world is something you can't help but want to explore. The surprises are great, and the game looks and sounds excellent. It would've been nice if the game placed less of an emphasis on the survival elements, especially since what's here won't satisfy fans of the genre, but as a whole, this is a game that's worth checking out for those who don't mind forgoing combat.

Score: 8.0/10