The Solus Project Interview
We sat down with Sjoerd De Jong, Creative Director of The Solus Project, to talk about the game.
So The Solus Project obviously draws heavily from science fiction, especially with its themes of abandonment and solitude. Were there any particular inspirations for the game?
Absolutely. First of all there is a lot of Unreal in the game and it has been a major inspiration for the atmosphere, the theme, surroundings and so forth. Growing up in the 80s and 90s there is a lot of influence from Indiana Jones and subsequently Tomb Raider in it too with the sense of adventure and the ancient temples and structures. There have also been a lot of influences from local comics I used to read as a kid. Stories about a group of children going out to look for treasures in far away places. That feeling of going out there, on your own, coupled with the isolation of the pre-mobile phone and internet age is really deeply embedded into the core of the game.
Similarly, are there any real-world or fictitious inspirations for the design of the planet the players find themselves on?
The biggest inspiration for the look and feel was Unreal, but beyond that references were taken from a wide range of games and movies. There are quite a few things that people might recognize from series like Lost or Half-Life in the game. For example, on the first level there is a crashed spaceship engine that is still running - a direct reference to Lost. What we hope to accomplish with all of these references and influences is to recapture the magic of watching and playing those classic movies and games.
The game offers players a number of choices, have you been surprised by the routes taken by some?
Perhaps the most surprising thing people have done so far is that in the 3rd large set of caves there is a big acid lake. It is barely possible to make your way across it without dying. By clinching onto the sides you can somehow get from ledge to ledge until you are past the vast lake. Players figured that that is the way to go, and quite a few ignored the regular exit just around the corner, with a lamp above it to mark its location. Players are also finding the tiniest holes between geometry and somehow manage to get past some of it. It is crazy how far some players are going with trying to find new hidden places, but it is also exactly what we tried to build. A large and complex world with many hidden layers underneath it. We have secret areas within secret areas sometimes.
What do you feel really differentiates The Solus Project from the other survival-style games out there?
The fact that it is not a survival-style game per-se in the first place. It is a single player adventure, with survival elements, but the true core of the game is the story and the adventure. Many survival games out there focus entirely on the act of surviving. Whereas The Solus Project is about the world and what has happened/is happening there. And its survival gameplay elements are a tool to experience those. The survival gameplay elements are there to strengthen the immersion of being in this strange world. By giving you a clear purpose and goal, by making you feel vulnerable, and forcing you to pay attention to every detail in the world, you feel more “there”.
On top of that you can also simply turn off the survival elements entirely. Or you can scale them up. We understand not everyone might want to eat and drink in games, and they might want to focus on exploring the world. You can scale the difficulty up and down at any point during the game.
How hard was it to balance the player’s need for survival with their urge to explore?
We have taken some deliberate decisions to ensure that exploring is the better, or only, option you have to survive. What we were basically after is not presenting the player with the choice to either explore, or survive, but to present them with the option to survive by exploring. In other words unless the player actively keeps on looking for things, they'd probably not last. A clear example of that is how we do not have any camp building, as that would be counter to exploration. What we do have, however, are hundreds of secrets and hidden places with resources. Finding those will upgrade you, and will give you other benefits. This is another thing that clearly sets The Solus Project apart from most other survival games.
If you were stranded on the planet in the game, how long do you think you’d last?
I designed the planet so I'd probably last for a while, knowing exactly where to go and what to avoid :) There is quite a bit of food around in the start area, so I think if it were real life your biggest immediate challenge would be to survive the very cold nights and the freak weather events. That would probably kill most people within days.
Given an unlimited budget, unlimited time, and infinite developers, what one feature would you add to the game?
Two player co-op probably, although that would kind of go against the feeling of isolation in the game. Other than that what we've made is really pretty much exactly what we had in mind, so given more budget and time I would have focused mostly on building even more content and bigger worlds. Something we hope to do with post release free expansion packs if the sales go ok.
Who’s a better captain, Kirk or Picard? And who would survive your planet the best?
I'd go for Kirk because he seems more suitable for the on-surface challenges but it has been a while since I watched a lot of Star Trek :)
You’ve released three free expansions already since you went into Early Access. Is this stream of content something that players can expect to keep seeing?
Yeah, we set out to release one large update every three to four weeks, and that is exactly what we have been doing. We have one more update coming up this month, and after that the final content will be included in the full release in June. We want to clearly set us apart from many Early Access titles that stay in Early Access for a very long time. When we released the first part of the game in the Early Access program and Xbox Game Preview Program we have been very clear on exactly what and when content will be added to the game, and when the game would transition to the full release.
You’ve been very active with the community in the Early Access program. How does this differ from the traditional pre-release testing method for you? What additional benefits and challenges have you found to this method?
Early Access and Xbox Game Preview Program have been really helpful to get feedback and bugs in from the community. We are a small studio, and QA is usually pretty hard to do. To have a community of people we can involve and get feedback from is really valuable, and it also helps for the full launch. It gives new players an already existing community, who already made guides and walkthroughs, and who have already left their reviews and ratings on the game's store pages. We also have help from Grip Digital, they are mainly responsible for Xbox One version and do some QA too.
You added VR support to the game in a build last year, that’s still experimental at this stage, how has the experience of adding that to the game been for you? Do you feel it helps the immersion?
It is hugely immersive to play the game in VR. Every time I play it myself I end up staring at everything for ages, amazed by how 3D it all is and how much of a sense of scale you get from it. The game is very much an experience. That is how we designed it. It is about pure immersion, a chance to leave your daily life behind and visit an alien world. VR fits perfectly with that. That being said VR is pretty difficult to do. We are all still figuring out how to do VR properly, both tech wise as with gameplay. There have been a lot of challenges along the way, and our VR support is still experimental. We are going to keep working on VR for quite a while and try to make it the best possible experience, but there are fundamental issues that will remain. For example, motion sickness from walking and jumping in first person is something that is pretty much impossible to solve entirely unless you build a game from the ground up for VR.
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