The Solus Project 0.57 Early Access Review

Teotl Studio comes with The Solus Project a spiritual successor of The Ball. On Steam page it is listed as a Early Access, Adventure, Indie, Survival, and Sci-fi game. The trailers make it seem like what it advertises on Steam, but if you play it, there is actually a variety of elements that make up the game that do not even use the more well known mechanics of these genres.

The story is you are part of a scouting ship for a bigger colony ship, until your ship has a fatal accident causing it to blow up. Luckily you were able to get to the escape pod and get out before it exploded, and you land on a nearby alien planet,here you have to fight to survive on this somewhat hostile environment.

I say somewhat ‘hostile environment’ because the only things trying to kill you above ground are the weather and the water, if you want to go for a swim in the winter season. Yes, I have done this many times myself. Below ground, you will find remnants of a lost alien race where the things they left behind try to kill you. However, the encounters were exciting but short lived compared to the rest of the game.

The survival element is good but it’s put on the back burner compared to other more well know survival games as you will craft almost nothing except for a hammer and a torch. The water and hunger system is particularly good but most camps are a place with unlimited food and water, and since these campsites are quite frequent, you should rarely run out of water or food in the game.

For that is not the main point of the game, but the adventure discovering what happened on this planet. The story being presented on only hieroglyphs of an alien language that you have to look at to find out the lore of the planet. Otherwise your character male or female(coming in the future) voice describe what is generally is happening.

Considering the many other early access survival that I have played in the past, despite its faults, The Solus Project is a good game. For the price tag of only $14.99 on Steam and getting access to future builds, it is definitely worth a buy or at least a look.

The Solus Project is currently available via the Xbox One Game Preview program.