Survival on an alien world keeps interrupting the exploration in this 2016 adventure

The Solus Project strands you on Gliese-6143-C with a crashed ship, a dying species back home, and weather that wants you dead. Teotl Studios built it in Unreal Engine 4, shipped it through Grip Games, and put it on PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PC, SteamVR and Xbox One. It is a first-person survival game about sending one signal across the void. It is also, too often, a game about managing a thirst meter while nothing much happens.

The full version arrived on June 7, 2016 for PC and July 15, 2016 for Xbox One, after an early access run on Steam, Xbox One and GOG that began in February 2016. It is a spiritual successor to Teotl’s earlier title, The Ball. Six outlets aggregated to a 6.4 out of 10 on IGDB. That number holds up.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

Gliese-6143-C and the last colony

The setup is clean and grim. You are an astronaut, the lone survivor of a crew hunting for a colony site. Earth is on the brink. Mankind is on the verge of extinction. Your spacecraft crashes on an uncharted alien planet, Gliese-6143-C, and the mission collapses into a single question: can you survive long enough to send a signal home?

The Solus Project plays that premise straight. There is no squad, no radio banter, no rescue window. Single player only, first person, and the planet does not care whether you live. The game leans on that isolation hard, and for the first few hours it works.

Teotl’s planet is not empty, though. It is full of temples and other places, ruins of a civilization that appears deserted. The game keeps asking whether you are truly alone. That question is the spine of the whole thing, and it is the part of The Solus Project that earns its keep.

Hunger, thirst and a body temperature gauge

The survival systems are the usual set, and The Solus Project does not reinvent them. You track hunger level, thirst, body temperature and weather conditions. Plants grow and rot. Weather swings from scorching heat to chilling storms. Wind and humidity are unforgiving, and the game means that literally — they are numbers working against you.

That is a lot of bookkeeping for an exploration game. The tension between the two halves is the central problem of The Solus Project. When you are reading a temple wall and piecing together what happened here, the game is strong. When you are backtracking for water because a meter dropped, it is not.

The environment does the heavy lifting. Unreal Engine 4 gives the planet a harsh, readable look, and the shift from brutal sun to sudden storm is the best trick in the box. The Solus Project understands that weather is a character. It just does not always know when to let that character speak.

A signal, a crash and one survivor

The through-line is simple: crash, survive, signal. The Solus Project never complicates that, and it should not. The goal is legible from the first minute, and the planet’s secrets are the reward for staying alive.

What the game does well is scale. You are one person against a world, and the temples make you feel small in the right way. The mystery of the deserted civilization gives the exploration a point beyond scavenging. Is he truly alone? The Solus Project asks it repeatedly, and the asking is better than most of the answering.

Where it slips is pacing. Long stretches pass with little beyond resource management and walking. The Solus Project is an indie game with indie scope, and the seams show in the quiet parts.

Temples, storms and the VR question

The Solus Project shipped on PlayStation VR and SteamVR, and the first-person perspective is built for it. The game is already about being small and exposed on a hostile planet. Putting that on your face is the obvious move, and the weather systems — the heat, the storms, the wind — are the material a headset handles best.

That said, VR does not fix the meter management. If anything, it makes the downtime longer, because you are standing in it. The Solus Project in VR is more intense and no less repetitive. The platform list is broad — PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PC, SteamVR, Xbox One — and the game is roughly the same experience on all of them, minus the headset.

The Solus Project by the numbers

What 6.4 out of 10 actually means

A 6.4 is a fair landing spot for The Solus Project, and the aggregate got it right. This is a game with a real idea — one survivor, one signal, one hostile world — and the craft to render that world convincingly. It is also a game that mistakes maintenance for tension, and that is the difference between a good survival game and a great one.

The Solus Project is at its best when it shuts up and lets you look. The temples, the ruins, the slow reveal of a civilization that is not there anymore — that is the reason to play. The hunger meter is not. Teotl built a planet worth exploring and then charged you admission in thirst.

Set it against what it is: a spiritual successor to The Ball, made by a small studio, released in 2016 across PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PC, SteamVR and Xbox One. That is an ambitious reach for an indie team, and The Solus Project mostly lands it. The VR versions are the ones that make the first-person perspective feel like the point rather than the default.

The verdict on The Solus Project

The Solus Project is worth playing if you want a planet to pick through and a mystery to pull at. It is not worth playing if you want survival systems with teeth. The game’s best moments are quiet, environmental and strange, and its worst are a meter telling you to go find water.

Six outlets landed on 6.4, and that is where this review lands too. The Solus Project is a solid, flawed, atmospheric game whose central question — are you truly alone out there? — is also its central mechanic. The answer is yes, and that is both the appeal and the problem.

The Solus Project: 6.4 of 10.

KEY FACTS

• Developer: Teotl Studios
• Publisher: Grip Games
• Engine: Unreal Engine 4
• Early access: February 2016 (Steam, Xbox One, GOG)
• Full release: June 7, 2016 (PC), July 15, 2016 (Xbox One)
• Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, PC, SteamVR, Xbox One
• Modes: Single player
• Setting: Gliese-6143-C
• Critic aggregate: 6.4/10 (IGDB, 6 outlets)

indie game review · PSVR · survival game · Teotl Studios · The Solus Project · Unreal Engine 4