Fort Solis
The experience envisioned by the developers :
A uniquely singular cinematic experience!
The story is told across four chapters. Like a Netflix series, Fort Solis can be binged in one intense session, or played chapter by chapter like an episodic TV show.
Welcome to Fort Solis
Responding to an unusual alarm call from a remote mining base, Jack arrives at the dark and desolate Fort Solis. With storm warnings imminent, he heads inside to make desperate contact. As the night grows longer, events escalate, spiral out of control and the mystery of what happened to the crew begins to reveal itself. The storms is approching, limiting Jack’s escape as he looks to hold out until morning arrives.
Immersive Storytelling
Fort Solis looks to deliver a high-fidelity experience designed to completely immerse the player in the cast and their long night. With performances from Roger Clark, Troy Baker and Julia Brown, Fort Solis looks to deliver emotion, fear, empathy and much more with every chapter.Supporting the core narrative are additional instances of story such as audio logs, surveillance footage or past of present events. Accompanying those are video logs recorded by all crew detailing the events before and perhaps even after that night the alarm was triggered at Fort Solis…
Grounded by the visuals
Fort Solis brings to players, the next level of details, facial and body animations. With the help of Unreal Engine 5.2 Fort Solis realistic universe is brought to life !
An Isolated mining complex
The skeleton of Fort Solis is built above and below ground. The base contains a variety of locations each with their own surface and sub surface levels. Players will be able to explore the isolated storm bearing surface, the creepy service tunnels absent of any light or the multiple departments that help Fort Solis function on a day-to-day basis such as Engineering, Medical and Communications.As the story unfolds locations can easily be revisited for additional story context or continue to serve as a backdrop to the fate that awaits Jack with each passing hour.
Steam User 31
Overall
70
Story
6/10
Starts very atmospheric and you want to know more. But for me the Payoff wasn´t really it.
Gameplay
2/10
It´s basically just walking and a few quicktime events.
Graphics
9/10
Shows what UE5 can do with a few LoD problems
Difficulty
1/10
It really hasn´t any difficult elemets
Bugs
1/10
I didn´t experienced any bugs
Performance
4/10
Very demanding for what it is
Sound
8/10
Music
6/10
Decent Soundtrack
Playtime
2/10
About 3-5 h until the credits
Achievement Grind
3/10
Collectables can be missed which forces a second playthrough
Price
4/10
I would wait for a bit of a discount
Steam User 24
This game reminds me of being at work.
Slow walking through nice environments with no means to defend myself besides my bare hands, in the proximity of people who don't have my best interests at heart.
Steam User 15
+ awesome voice acting
+ cool scenario
+ sci-fi
+ good looking environments
+ interesting story
- worst quick-time events since the 1800s
- image not always stable in dark areas due to Global Illumination method used (Lumen)
- slow-walking can get annoying eventually
Overall a good, short game with great voice-acting that is somewhat enjoyable due to the atmosphere and actors. Otherwise, nothing too special, but okay.
Steam User 14
Fort Solis is a great game with beautiful visuals and immersive atmosphere. However, the gameplay can become a bit repetitive after a while. I really liked the story, but I wished there was more variety. If you enjoy narrative-driven games, you will appreciate this one. The voice acting is top, but some parts felt a little bit long for me.
Steam User 11
I'm recommending this game only because in my opinion it does have some positive attributes, and for some the positives may outweigh the negatives. However, it was a major disappointment for me. It's probably easiest to review this game in a pro v con manner.
pros: -graphical style and atmosphere well thought out and executed.
-superb voice acting
-sort of, kind of, interesting story
-psychologically immersive
cons: -clunky, annoying mechanics
-repetitive, unnecessary actions needed for unnecessary, irritating "puzzles".
-laconic, plodding play style
-terrible map presentation and map mechanics
-very little actual tension created as the story progresses, which does not work well with the quiet,
empty atmospherics. This is probably my biggest complaint, because I love the kind of subtle yet
disquieting atmosphere the game utilized, but you'd better be able to produce some narrative tension if
you're going to pretty much avoid any action other than walking around. The game didn't need fighting
or even complex QTEs, but it most certainly did need a story that got under your skin and started
crawling. The game falls flat as a Martian pancake in this regard.
-ending is vague and unsatisfying.
I really wanted to like this game, because it had many of the basic ingredients of a good, possibly great psychological sci-fi thriller. But the development team obviously doesn't know how to cook with those ingredients. All the gameplay issues would fade away in my mind if the game had been able to produce a sense of emotional connection to the characters and the story, but it did not, and coupled with a fairly tepid story concept and an emotionally deflating ending, this one goes into the bin.
Steam User 9
Fort Solis looks great, has a wonderfully atmospheric setting and am intriguing enough story to keep you going. The problem is the pace of it.
People said in their reviews that the story takes four hours. It would be done in less than an hour if you can actually move with a modicum of urgency. Your character is stuck in a casual walking pace. Very, very slow, very, very casual walking pace. And there's nothing you can do about it. You're essentially following a predetermined path oh so slowly, you find items, documents and recordings that build up your understanding of what has happened and you keep going. Very, very slowly.
For atmosphere and setting it deserves a thumbs up.
For the way it plays it deserves a thumbs down.
You can watch a walkthrough on YouTube and save some money. Or you can buy the game, support the developers but do make sure they know that they need to meet gamers half way.
Steam User 34
In my opinion, Fort Solis is a psychological thriller, whereby the climax is approached slowly. This slow approach is due on the one hand to the strict walking and on the other to the interaction with certain objects (e-mails, audio and video recordings, etc.). In other words, the events relating to Fort Solis and its crew are explored at a walking pace.
If you don't like this type of exploration, you can stop reading this review at this point and not consider this game for purchase.
The atmosphere and the environment can seem creepy in certain situations, but nothing more. The characters (especially the playable ones) definitely seem realistic and the interactions between the characters can sometimes be funny even in these circumstances. However, there are moments where the verbal exchanges don't necessarily come in handy because you're focused on something else at that time, but that was personally fine for me.
What I didn't like at all were the current performance problems: visual artifacts, spontaneous FPS drops, random stuttering and the like. These problems drastically affect how the game is perceived, especially because everything is explored slowly. Due to the fact that certain Unreal Engine games are known to come with such problems, I also tried certain fixes that didn't help at all with this game. Therefore, I would like to point out that you should not waste time with such things. It's up to the developers to fix it!
I think it's good that the developers have included a simple photo mode or Steam achievements in the game, for example, but they should have given priority to optimizing the game, even if the development team behind the game is not that big.
For those who want to know a little more about the photo mode and the achievements mentioned, I would like to provide a quick overview:
Photomode:
simple/intuitive for both beginners and experienced players
you can take artistic pictures if you have ideas
you are somewhat limited by the locations/characters (not many picture variations possible)
in comparison to other games, the quality of the pictures taken with F12 is really bad, so I recommend activating uncompressed screenshots in the Steam settings before taking screenshots
Achievements:
the largest part can already be covered by simply playing the game
to reach 100%, you have to be a little careful when investigating, as you may overlook certain items (no manual level selections, only fixed checkpoints)
Nevertheless, I only recommend the game if you can fully relate to the style of play explained above and if the current performance issues have been resolved. Given the shortness of the game, I would also recommend buying it at a corresponding discount.