We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary for the release of Solarix, an ambitious indie sci-fi horror game that I had hoped would fill the void left by the absence of a new Dead Space installment. When we first looked at this game last May it was virtually unplayable. Since that time there have been numerous patches, so we decided to grab our space helmet and try again, but sadly it seems those subsequent patches have only fixed some superficial flaws and for us; the game remains just as unplayable as it was last year.
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. The most glaring issue with the game for us is the broken controller support. The game claims “partial controller support”, which means you still have to use a mouse in the menus and once you get into the game all of the tutorial pop-ups are for keyboard only, leaving you to guess at which buttons do what (or write down the conversions from the option menu). But even worse, there is something still terribly wrong with the analog movement in that when the left stick is in neutral position your character continuously sidesteps to the right. This was the main reason we stopped playing in 2015 and the main reason we didn’t play much more this time around. Our game studio where we record and play games is not mouse and keyboard friendly. We play everything with a controller and Solarix is quite unplayable even after the 1.5 patch.
We cobbled together some extensions and actually tried to get deeper into the game using a mouse and keyboard only to find more issues lurking beyond the first door of the game. Despite enabling vsync the screen tearing in this game is unbearable. At least it’s confined to the upper third of the screen, but any swift panning of the camera triggered a nauseating waterfall-ripple effect. Speaking of water, the entire game seems to be viewed through a sheet of water. I’m guessing this may be a motion blur effect, perhaps to simulate the view through your character’s helmet, but again, it’s distracting to the point of inducing sickness.
One area where Solarix does shine is with its audio presentation; both in some sincerely creepy sound effects and some surprisingly good voice work mostly found in the collectible audio logs and radio conversations. Music is mostly atmospheric but also adds to the creepy factor, but therein lies the game’s biggest issue. It just never makes the jump from creepy to scary, and not for a lack of trying.
Solarix favors stealth over violence as clearly seen by the lack of any worthwhile weapons. But in order to be stealthy you have to crouch and stay crouched for most of the game resulting in a movement speed that is painfully slow. Enemy AI is really bad with monsters that follow strict and limited patrol patterns until you forget to crouch at which point they immediately hear and descend upon you, as you try to flee getting stuck on random bits of the environment in the process. Death means rolling the dice and hoping the auto-save function actually worked. Checkpoints are few and far between leading to lots of unnecessary replay, but at least the recent patches have fixed the problem where the game wasn’t even saving as indicated.
I could have been tempted to overlook some of the game’s flaws if there was ample reason to even care about playing. The premise is certainly intriguing – lone electrical engineer stranded on an interstellar research station fighting off some alien disease and the infected remains of his crew – but the game’s promised open-ended design and reliance on setting a mood rather than resorting to cheap jump-scare tactics comes off as generic and boring. The adventure is quite linear despite plenty of dead-end side paths, but with no collectibles or reasons to explore those dead ends they just become annoying. And even when you are following the designers’ intended path there is a surprising amount of intentional backtracking you are forced to endure.
I hate to crap on any game; especially an ambitious indie title that tries to fill the gap in one of my favorite genres, but until the designers can patch up the controller issues, fix the screen tearing, and make motion blur an option I can turn off, Solarix is still a broken mess, even after a year’s worth of patches. Assuming the bugs are ever fully patched, the core game design with its poorly implemented stealth system, broken AI, and lack of any real scares will make this a tough recommendation, even during the most generous Steam sale. It’s a shame because the story and voice acting deserve a much better game.
