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The Solus Project coming to Early Access on February 18th, new dev diary explains mechanics

Solus Project early access

I first noticed The Solus Project a week or so back with its claims on single-player survival ‘done right’ – a focus on exploration, discovery and staying alive in a hostile environment. I’m no hater of DayZ and its kin, but they certainly aren’t for me. The Solus Project promises a similar experience of trying to keep breathing in a large, non-linear and deadly environment, while providing the mystery-solving single-player chops of the best walking simulators. The latest dev diary explains some of what you’ll actually be doing, along with the announcement that it’s releasing into Early Access on February 18th.

For the other side of the survival coin, here’s the best sandbox games.

The new trailer is thankfully just as soft-voiced and calm as the original, showing off all the ways the planet will try to kill you on its massive, complex landscapes, including via meteor shower:

I’m interested to see how that system of crafting goes. Saying it won’t be repetitive is all well and good, but making it interesting and worthy of the term crafting without it becoming ‘just grab all the bits in this area and slap them together’ is a challenge. I can only assume it will be about trading one resource for another, creating heat, light, food and water in different ways for different reasons, and having to figure out which your most likely to need.

It does look absolutely gorgeous though. Alien architecture doesn’t get the props it deserves in games, and so often we’re busy firing a rocket launcher at it rather than trying to work out how it was built, by who and when. There’s a whiff of archaeology about this whole game that I’m well into.

More info over on Steam, and the first version will be out in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be more of an episodic thing that the standard Early Access bug-splat. When it launches there’ll be three levels, equalling roughly two hours of gameplay, which will be added to as things progress. It’s going to be rapid too, as the current plan is to be done and fully launched inside 90 days. According to a press release it’s already been in development for a couple of years, and based on trailers they do have a fully working engine and plan – now it’s about building actual levels. Naturally, I’d assume a delay, but getting it this year doesn’t seem like an impossibility.