The Solus Project Preview

Let’s just get this out in the open: there are too many survival games, especially on PC. Whether it’s Don’t Starve, The Forest, How to Survive, Day Z, GoatZ, State of Decay, Stranded Deep, The Long Dark, Rust, H1Z1 or Unturned, anyone looking for a sense of survivalist peril is more than accommodated. What about consoles though? Most of those games are PC exclusive, and while Don’t Starve (arguably the best of the list) has been on PS4 for a while, it’s only soon arriving on Xbox One. That’s where The Solus Project comes in. It is indeed yet another survival game, although its home on Xbox One is a somewhat unique selling point from the start. There’s something about the game that feels even more special though; and while some of that uniqueness may be a consequence of Microsoft lending its PR force to Teotl, there are ideas here that sound fantastic on paper.

For survival games of this sort, the visual style is incredibly important for setting a certain game apart from others. The game world of The Solus Project is beautiful, a triumphant tour de force for Unreal Engine 4. The landscape is brimming with vegetation and the sea crashes against the rocks in dramatic fashion; it’s a perfect example of the juxtaposition of this mysterious world between natural beauty and dangerous devastation. Indeed, while things may initially seem calm and undisturbed, it doesn’t take long for the negative sides of this world to take effect. Not two minutes into my short demo of The Solus Project, I was dodging my way through a particularly viscous meteor shower, supposedly the developers hadn’t set up this presentation version to go easy on me.

It’s clear that the weather or, more generally, the atmosphere of the planet, is lined up to play a key role in how you play The Solus Project. Naturally, disasters like that meteor shower will be a natural enemy that should keep players on their toes. I also got to see a rather demonic-looking tornado rip towards the island, accompanied by a booming thunderstorm. These disasters are obviously dynamic and random, and I was assured that they certainly can kill the player if they’re not careful. More than just random events though, the weather also plays into the basic survival of your character - a lost and lonesome space traveller. Humidity, cold water, even running uphill are all conditions that will affect your character. His body will react to these conditions and it’ll be your job to keep it up and running.

That’s a familiar concept for a survival game, but the extent to which it plays into the game mechanics looks to be unrivaled. With all of these basic survival needs to occupy your mind, it’s a wonder how you’ll ever be able to pay attention to the game’s central story. Perhaps The Solus Project’s more unusual feature (aside from the obvious agreement with Microsoft) is the focus on storytelling. Most games of this nature tend to have an underlying plot that’s pretty simple and often found exclusively within lost notes. The Solus Project is supposedly much more oriented around the tale of a lonely wanderer. How exactly that is supposed to be achieved without any other characters I’m not quite sure, but I certainly want to find out.

Given there are no “obvious enemies” and there’s also no combat, The Solus Project could be a true example of a game that really tries to capture that ‘connection with nature’ that you’ll hear people like Bear Grylls ramble on about. Survival games have a tendency to be very game-y: “fetch these five things to make this, kill these guys here to unlock this area”. The Solus Project looks a little different in this regard as it’s much more open-ended and equally realistic (minus the intergalactic space-travel of course). The development teams has also promised that the game will harken back to older titles, meaning complex level design, plenty of secret areas to explore and a willingness to push the player to his or her limits.

The Solus Project is joining a crowded market, and for that reason there’s a definite risk of it being overlooked. Based on what I’ve played, that would be unfair. This is a great looking game with some inventive mechanics and solid survival gameplay. Its Xbox One and Windows 10 focus could well keep it in the public eye, but if it's going to hold the imagination of survival fans, then it’s going to have to bring something completely new to the fore. The integration with nature and stronger focus on story could well be those newer elements, but just how well they work we won’t see until Q1 of next year.