I always appreciate games that cause the player to ask questions, and this is even more true when the questions are about the player themselves and the world that they inhabit. Solo: Islands of the Heart is the latest title to attempt this, with a focus on asking the player to consider love and their relationships with those around them, alongside gameplay mechanics of navigation and puzzle solving.
Solo is the first game from Madrid, Spain-based developer Team Gotham, and like a lot of first-time indie games, it packs a variety of good ideas into a whole that perhaps lacks a little polish. Visually, Solo is adorable if a little creaky, and there’s a widespread use of color that adds vibrancy to the world and allows the various islands that you’ll visit to pop off the screen. Unfortunately, textures are a little rough, and some of the visual design isn’t great, meaning that for the most part, while the game is colorful, it isn’t exactly easy on the eye.
What the visuals do achieve, however, is a solid indication of where you’re supposed to go next. Solo is broken down into three chapters, and each of these is further broken down into islands, which is where the majority of the gameplay loop takes place. You’re given a puzzle to solve, often navigational in nature, and by using a series of boxes that are available in the world, and equipment that you’ll gather on your journey, your aim is to activate a totem which will, in turn, ask you a question about a topic to do with romance. Once answered, the next island will rise out of the ocean, and you’ll be asked to repeat the process, only in slightly different circumstances. It’s never too difficult to figure out the solution to a puzzle, and there are no wrong answers to the totem’s questions, meaning that progress through the game can be made at quite a pace.
In truth, it feels like the only real impact that your answers have on your experience are to change how a couple of NPCs react to you, and even then, it’s only usually with a couple of lines of written dialogue. Though the questions did make me think about my life, and how I view both my current relationship and relationships that I’ve had in the past, I didn’t feel as if I came out of the other side of the game with any more insight than if I had merely taken a quiz on Buzzfeed or a similar website. The curiosity of what I would be asked next was what often gave me the motivation to progress through the puzzles, but I didn’t find that there was much, if any, real pay-off, either in the gameplay or how I felt once I put the controller down.
It’s a shame, because outside of the love aspect, Solo doesn’t really have a whole lot going for it. The puzzles are fairly uninspired and not especially exciting, and though you have the option to pet some adorable creatures and reunite couples, the islands that you visit don’t offer up a whole lot in the way of interest. The one positive aspect that can be noted, although it isn’t a positive for the game overall, is that each overall chapter is quite short, and the game as a whole can be finished in a couple of hours, meaning that you’re not slogging your way through uninteresting environments for hours on end.
Reviewing Solo: Islands of the Heart is a difficult task, as I can see that genuine affection has been put into the game, and it’s one of the most innocent and well-natured experiences that I can remember playing in recent times. However, as a game, it’s difficult to recommend, as there just isn’t enough here that I can, with good faith, say is an enjoyable experience. It’s not badly made, and I didn’t experience any technical issues of note, but the game just isn’t particularly inspiring, and left little to no impression on me once I was finished with it. If you’re really desperate to explore how you feel about love and romance, and want to mix that in with some seemingly arbitrary puzzles, then Solo offers that experience, but as mentioned above, you’ll come out with pretty much the same result if you fill out an internet quiz.