Few sci-fi games embrace the menacing strangeness and indifference of the universe as you find it in Kubrick, Tarkovsky, or even Scott’s original Alien. Space, and the far future, tend to be familiar analogues to the everyday conflicts we see around us. The aliens are never too> alien, and new worlds are never too> new.

The Solus Project maroons the player beyond the outskirts of comprehension. It’s a survival game with a little more guidance and sense of purpose that you’ll find in the million other survival games jostling for attention on Early Access. It’s also about a hundred times more polished, which is fitting for a game fast-approaching its full release. But its gorgeous graphics and clever diegetic interface are all in the service of a story of isolation and suspense on a deserted alien world.

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Humanity no longer has a home. Earth has been destroyed, and all that remains of it is on a nomadic fleet of ships searching for a place to rebuild their civilization. In The Solus Project, you take on the role of a surveying team charting an Earthlike planet that may just prove suitable for humanity’s resettlement. Disaster strikes suddenly and you find yourself marooned on the surface of Gliese. Armed with only the most basic knowledge of the dangers the planet holds, you must set out to solve the mystery of the destruction of your ship, and contact your fleet for rescue.

The Solus Project could easily be mistaken for another sci-fi themed survival game.

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Another survival game! Who wants to chop down a thousand trees and eat a hundred freshly harvested Happy Meals per hour to fend off accelerated starvation? While many survival games might expect you to spend all your time collecting and eating, as if there were nothing better to do, The Solus Project [official site] might be different. It takes place on a hand-crafted planet and is a more linear experience than many of its peers. Indeed, I’m going to go ahead and say its apparent focus on weather, health and exploration makes it the successor to Robinson’s Requiem I’ve been waiting for.

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It’s probably not fair to either game to invoke No Man’s Sky when talking about upcoming sci-fi survival offering The Solus Project [official site], but both the reddish-pink colour palette and the heavy use of tricorders (let’s not kid ourselves, eh?) does put me in mind of Hello Games’ newbie. The Solus Project is billed as a survival game, but more in the classical sense than the newer DayZ, Rust etc one. Devs Teotl Studios – who you may know from The Ball – and Grip – of Unmechanical fame – are at pains to point out it’s not a sandbox jobbie. It’s a singleplayer, linear game in which you will be attacked not by creatures, but by a hostile environment, as well has having to deal with hunger and thirst. Man, that’s easy: eat fingers, drink wee. Survivalists these days, honestly – no backbone, that’s their problem.

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