14 DAY TRIAL // Alien: Isolation was a pretty big surprise last year, but it wasn't the first video game to emphasize tension over shooting stuff in the face while yelling something about the Cole Train seeing you chilling, and deciding to heat you up.
Thief and System Shock were pretty good games in their time, to say the least, and now an indie developer wants to offer us a modern experience in that vein, with a title that already has some science fiction weight to it: Solarix.
Okay, so maybe that not the exact title of the book that sci-fi fans will think of, but it's close enough, and the prospect of a first-person game that focuses on a proper horror survival experience, hopefully without cheap jump scares, is always enticing, for me at least.
So I jumped into the game. The action takes place in 2166, and I started out without knowing much about what's going on, piecing together various crew logs scattered around the environment, trying to make sense of it all.
A mysterious and mischievous voice was guiding me along and teasing me, and an AI kept outlining new objectives I had to accomplish, warning me of possible dangers.
Everything is dark and there are always some clunky machines making noise in the background, as well as fans' wheezing, to remind me that I'm on a space station, and that in itself carries a multitude of perils.
It's dark and atmospheric and there are no jump scares
I stepped out of the derelict vessel, only to investigate another crashed fragment, and to learn of the horrid fate of the crew. Eventually, I stumbled upon vital pieces of information that led me to the conclusion that an alien entity had done this, an otherworldly presence unsuccessfully probed for decades, during which the investigators had been turned to madness.
During all this time, that teasing voice kept planting the seed of doubt in my head. What if the others weren't the monsters, but instead my mind was playing tricks on me, leading me on to become someone else's pawn?
On the technical side, it feels a bit wonky, in general, from movement to enemy animations, and combat feels like it has no weight. Granted, it's always hard to balance firefights in a game that is supposed to be about stealth.
A science fiction version of classic Thief would be great, but Solarix still has plenty to figure out before getting there.
Apart from the lack of polish, which is understandable since this was an early build, there are several areas to take care of, such as making the space zombies feel less like, well, mindless drones, and making the game feel less like a bland shooter, and more like an actual horror thriller, with a more definite direction.
For the time being, I enjoyed being left to my own devices in its world, instead of being prodded to action down a cordoned-off corridor.
In any case, my interest is piqued, and I'm going to keep an eye on Pulsetense Games' creation.
