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 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
Stunning visuals, strong atmosphere, and great performances. This is a true walking simulator, though. So, you'll be walking through most of the game—and sometimes it'll feel like you're doing it TOO slowly. In my case, I like walking simulators, so it wasn't a big deal. Although it doesn't do much to stand out, the story has its moments. I enjoyed my ~4 hours with it, and I'll probably revisit it in the future. A solid experience overall.
Steam User 9
First off, it's a walking simulator - if you don't enjoy this type of game, then don't play!
Fort Solis looks really great in UE5, but the frame rate is pretty bad without upscaling enabled on your GPU. The story was intriguing to start off with, but has a sort of unsatisfying ending. Suggest buying on sale if you're intrigued.
Steam User 9
I had a lot of fun playing through this.
Maybe this game is a "waling simulator", but honestly it just contributes to the pace the game was intended to have.
I enjoyed going through the detailed environments, immersing myself in the world-building done so far (which is expanded on in a sort of epilogue short story the developers linked in a Steam announcement), and the little elements of mystery were also nice. In fact it was a mystery up until the end. Although the reveal wasn't very revealing, upon reflection I realized what's actually shocking is the lengths gone through by the physical antagonist. I won't spoil that, just keep it in mind if you play the game or have already played it.
And there were two things funny about this game and how I ended up deciding to review it.
First, I had no idea Roger Clark was voicing the main protagonist when I bought this game. A few minutes in, a little confused by the widely different accent, I was like, "Wait. Is this Arthur Morgan?" And it was. About ten minutes in I was so convinced I finally just paused the game and Googled it to confirm. I just initially bought this game because of the Sci-Fi, honestly.
The second funny thing is I completely forgot to review this game for several months. The reason why I ended up remembering to write one is that Fallen Leaf actually responded to some comment on some post responding to someone unhappy with the post-release development pace. It was a little weird, especially since I had completely forgotten about it and this so happens to be a time where recent reviews are "mixed". But really I find it hilarious more than anything. This reminds me, I should probably write a few reviews for a couple other games....
Oh! Yeah. Overall 9/10. I suppose the writing could've been done better overall, but obviously they put a lot of work into the atmosphere. That plus the environments and the voice acting are bulking this score up quite a bit.