The Solus Project has players surviving on an alien world filled with wonders and dangers in equal measure. Unlike most survival based adventure titles, The Solus Project has players reaching for a goal. Surviving is indeed important in The Solus Project but also your mission to save the human race takes a high priority. Explore this new world and find a means of saving humanity. If you’re someone who loves games like The Long Dark and Minecraft, then you’re going to be interested in the survival themes presented in The Solus Project.

Similar to most survival games, The Solus Project has players exploring various landscapes while they craft items and find new discoveries. Players will have to deal with harsh climate changes, a myriad of dangerous areas to explore and the need for basic human survival such as keeping hydrated and eating food. However, unlike most aimless survival games, The Solus Project caters to those who want a story to enjoy and a goal to strive for. Players should anticipate a large world with tons of lore and numerous secrets—over 200 to be exact—to collect and find. The Solus Project wishes to show what narration and survival can do in equal measures.

In the near future mankind is facing a possible end. Thus, The Solus Project is launched in order to see if there is a means of saving the Earth within the far reaches of space. You are an astronaut part of the mission to find a possible colony in space and find yourself in a desperate situation when your spacecraft runs into trouble and is forced to crash land. Upon waking up, you notice your spacecraft is in tatters and you’ve landed on an unknown planet. However, while you know you must survive and find a means of escaping the planet, your mission to save humanity is still a must. Explore this new world and find what secrets it contains in the Solus Project.

Here at Honey’s Anime, we’ve dabbled heavily into survival/adventure game titles. Though we always find ourselves wanting more from most games. That’s why when we heard of The Solus Project we found ourselves intrigued by the idea of a space based survival title. After having put some time into The Solus Project, we feel confident we can give you guys a solid review of it. Is it worth the $19.99 price tag or are you better off exploring other gaming titles? Let us find out in our review of The Solus Project.

The Solus Project at first glance seems like your run of the mill adventure survival game. If we’re being honest here—and we always try to be here at Honey’s Anime—this isn’t too far from the reality of what you’re getting in The Solus Project. Players will explore a large world and need to craft items such as make shift torches and other items to solve various puzzles and situations that arise in The Solus Project. The crafting system at first is odd and sometimes weird but once you begin to realize how everything works it basically boils down to common sense. Want to craft a torch? You need a pipe or stick and some form of flammable material. Though if we do have any complains about the crafting system in The Solus Project it’s that there aren’t enough things to build or design which is a bit of a letdown.

Besides crafting, players will also need to survive various hazards in The Solus Project. These hazards come in the form of the need to eat and drink, stay warm during the harsh environment shifts—which there are a lot of—and dealing with random and sometimes not so random events. The first few hours can be tough in The Solus Project but quickly you’ll find the game can be very easy as food, water and items that boost your stats come in droves. This doesn’t make the experience horrible, mind you, but it takes the survival element out of The Solus Project quite quickly leaving a more focused adventure game which can be a turnoff if people wanted a more focused survival game. Though equally some might like this form of gameplay shift to remove the constant repetitive nature most survival games have.

Besides the gameplay, The Solus Project wants to be a story based game. Similar to titles like The Long Dark, The Solus Project gives players a lot of narrative though less by just word of mouth and more by finding objects scattered across the world. Many people who have dabbled with the PC version of The Solus Project say there’s an eerie feeling as you read past logs of various explorers who met their demise on the planet you’re not trying to survive on and we here at Honey’s Anime couldn’t agree more. While The Solus Project isn’t a horror based title, one could almost say the ideas within can be considered horror filled, especially when you find a note saying how some unknown threat has decimated a crew or a crew member suddenly disappearing. The atmosphere in The Solus Project is easily one of its greatest strengths and makes this 20+ hour title exciting from beginning to near end, we’ll mention why we state it like this later in our review.

One of the things we did love about The Solus Project is the graphics. From start to finish The Solus Project looks incredible, especially when you realize this isn’t a triple A title. Environments, various weather effects and explorable ruins all have beauty and strength in their design. There are a few times where the graphics take hit—namely the few character models and animations of them you’ll see—but it’s rare overall. Survival adventure titles always need to create a strong immersion using their graphics to keep players feeling as if they are part of the world and The Solus Project executes that quite well.

The Solus Project isn’t perfect and there are some issues that keep it from being amazing. The first major issue comes in the form of the ending. Honestly, while The Solus Project is an enjoyable story for most of the game, the ending scene seemed like an overly quick conclusion which for us ruined the experience a bit. Mind you, it’s important to note this is a subjective statement and others might like the ending more than we did which we hope is the case. Another issue we had with The Solus Project is the lack of replayability. While this is a 20+ hour title, if you’re playing The Solus Project for its survival gameplay you’re going to find there’s no point once the credits role, unless you’re aiming for 100% completion by finding all the secret items that The Solus Project contains. Overall, these are minor issues but we felt they needed to be mentioned as a warning to those who want to pick up The Solus Project.

The Solus Project is an enjoyable experience if you’re looking for a survival based game that focuses more on narration then survival. We were also amazed by the beautiful graphics and landscape within The Solus Project which make you feel as if you really are on a different planet. The atmosphere also helps by creating a sense of tension as you explore and a giant storm begins which could possibly get you killed with lighting strikes or meteor strikes in equal measure. However, after some time with The Solus Project, we began to feel it became a bit too easy and soon it shifted from a survival game to an adventure based game with survival elements feeling more tedious then important. Though at the end of the day, if you don’t want just another Minecraft clone and enjoy your adventure survival games with a focus on story and clear goals than aimless exploration, you will really fancy The Solus Project.

For $19.99, The Solus Project is an easy game to recommend to most who love adventure games with survival elements. While The Solus Project isn’t perfect, it does a lot right thanks to impressive narrative, jaw dropping visuals and simple gameplay. The Solus Project is an experience we think many you will want to experience and we hope our review has guided you into the right decision. Now then, what are your thoughts on The Solus Project? We would love to hear from you in the comments below. If you loved our review of The Solus Project then you should check out our other reviews and gaming related articles here at Honey’s Anime.