The Solus Project is an adventure survival game where you crash on a new planet and try to survive at all costs.
Story:
It’s the future and humanity is on the brink of extinction. You’re a crew member on the Solus Spaceship which has one mission: find a planet where humanity can start anew. Things take a wrong turn when your spaceship is shot down and seemingly everyone on board is dead apart from you. Everything seems lost, but you notice that there are signs of life on the planet. It becomes a fight for survival as you try to establish contact with the other Solus ship.
The story in The Solus Project actually really surprised me by how captivating the whole thing was. When I started playing I didn’t expect something so intriguing. It starts off slow and you think it’s gonna be just a plain old survival game where nothing really happens, but it actually has some depth to it with scattered notes and pictures to be found as well so you have more lore to the whole thing.
Also the game has one hell of an ending that I won’t spoil here, but that ending is seriously cool.
Graphics:
The visuals are stunning in The Solus Project. Everything in the game has a ton of detail put into it; structures, lush environments and mysterious caverns for example. The visuals are top notch and for such a small team it looks phenomenal. There is a big downside to this however. When playing the game normally it looks great, but when you boot up PSVR, the graphics look absolutely abysmal and to this day it’s probably the worst looking PSVR game I have seen. I know the graphics need to look a bit worse to keep the game running at a stable framerate but this was too much for me to handle. I decided to stop playing VR and go back to playing the game normally.
Audio:
The audio department is also incredibly top notch. Every little detail is amazing, like the rain falling down, lighting storms, tornadoes, cave echoes and a bunch more. The voice acting is also really well done, even though you don’t hear a lot of it. Also the soundtrack is great and helps build absolutely outstanding atmosphere when you’re in caves exploring the alien structures.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is where The Solus Project falls flat on it’s face. The game is at heart a survival game, where you have to monitor you hunger, thirst and body temperature to survive. That’s fine, but apart from those things there’s nothing more. You pick up food, water and supplies and you eat when your robotic companion tells you to do so. It becomes incredibly stale after a while, which isn’t helped by the fact that the game is pretty long.
The puzzles are also incredibly simplistic. You basically take one thing and bring it somewhere, rinse repeat, rinse repeat. You get the idea. I felt the game needed some kind of puzzle mechanic, but you won’t find it here. Also the game could have used something that would be your threat, but apart from the weather there aren’t threats in the game (for the most part). Most of your threats boil down to not having food or water, and the extreme weather conditions that happen once you’re on the surface on the planet.
Verdict:
The Solus Project is a mixed bag in my opinion. While the story, graphics and audio are great, the gameplay is rather lackluster and becomes very boring after playing for a while. However I do suggest picking this game up for those looking for a bit more in their survival games.
The game was reviewed with a key provided by the developer/publisher.
