A Phenomenal Journey into The Solus Project
The Solus Project is a semi-open world single-player survival-puzzle game. You play a member of the Solus scout fleet sent out to identify if another planet in a nearby solar system can host human life after a rogue star obliterates planet Earth leaving the remainder of humanity sheltering near Pluto. Unfortunately, your ship is destroyed outside of this mysterious planet sending you crash landing onto the alien terrain as the sole survivor of your group. It's up to you and you alone to determine if this new world is hospitable, and you must survive it first hand in hopes that it can be a safe haven for all of humanity.
I won't go into any more details about the story. All I can say is that in all the years I've been gaming, I have never played a game as immersive as this. From the moment you step out of the escape pod and see the sky above where your previous scout ship is disintegrating in the atmosphere, you become embedded into the game. The graphics--with the way you can see multiple planets orbiting each other and their moons in the sky, to the fiery streaks of meteors bombarding the ground, to the way the waters, trees, plants, and grass all react and bend to the punishing high winds of the planet--are mind-blowing. The planet comes alive with it's own unique day and night time cycles, varying weather, and coastal tides that reveal ancient objects on the ocean floor and then bury them again under massive depths of water.
The gameplay is very much designed for survival, and the realism of the survival mode is phenomenal. With the planet orbiting so close to it's parent star, the day time temperatures can reach over 170 degrees at their peak and then crash to an extremely deep freeze at night. You must play your cards carefully to ensure you have the resources to survive both instances. Food, water, heat, sleep; these are all things you need to monitor carefully. Get too wet and your temperature will drop. It's great to cool off in the heat of the day, but by sun down, it's a sure way to die.
Where this game excels is its depth. The combination of the story, the music, the sound effects, the way the environment reacts to you and you to it, it is incredible! I have never felt fear in a game like this, not since I was a small child when it was so much easier to lose yourself in a game. If I was to summarize the game in a single word, it would be exactly that: fear. Not fear derived from horror, but fear of failing to survive, failing to find out more about what this planet, and it's previous inhabitants, have come to, fear of what impact your decisions have... Completing the construction of an ancient mechanism and operating it to see it perform an unknown function, I fear for what I have done and what repercussions may occur. This game actually makes you care.
Last night I got caught out. I awoke to a beautiful day and began scaling a cliff nearby. At the top, I heard a distant rumble and saw dark clouds coming in from the ocean. They looked thick and low. A storm was coming. I started to scale back down the cliff as fast as possible. Half way down, the temperature dropped dramatically as the rain hit. The wind picked up substantially hitting 50MPH then higher. My survival device notified me of it's detection of an atmospheric anomaly, and suddenly hail stones the size of baseballs began to strike all around. I reached the ground and sprinted towards the shelter of a cave I passed two days ago. The winds began to blow harder and the hailstones battered my character cracking the glass of his helmet and my screen. I looked back for just a moment at the path I was running right in time to watch a tornado touch down and trace my very steps. I push myself harder searching for the cave in the wind and debris and I finally make it going in as far as I possibly can, crouching down to fit under rocks. I watch the tornado pass by the opening of the cave and a few minutes later the hailstorms taper off and all that remains is a heavy rainfall. I am safe... at least for a couple of days. I made the unfortunate decision to stroll around the beach carrying a large metal hammer in a lightning storm. I guess the planet would be more hospitable to Thor.
The Solus Project is in pre-release, having just released it's third update. Development cycles are 2-3 weeks so content is coming fast. It's currently available to purchase in it's pre-release form for a very affordable price up until it's full release in May when the price goes up. Even though it is not complete in this form, I've been playing it for a couple of weeks and it has been amazing, and I'll have the full game automatically when it debuts. For those of you who are up to date with technology as it arrives, it's also going to be compatible for the Oculus Rift which, I believe, would only further enhance the immersive and amazing experience of the game. You can currently find the game on Steam, XBox One, and GOG.
