Silica
Dive into Silica, an immersive blend of first-person shooter and real-time strategy, each true to its respective genre. The game allows you freedom of choice without forcing you to play as either.
Intense Shooter and Classic Strategy
If you prefer sand-filled boots, bullets whizzing overhead, and menacing alien jaws closing in, the infantry role is for you. Not limited to merely foot-based soldiers, you can also take control of any available vehicles, including the colossal Harvester, the speedy Light Quad, or the insidious Siege Tank, just to name a few.
Or, if chewing metal is your niche, then the hive-mind, insect-like aliens are your faction of choice. Shift your consciousness between creatures such as the stealthy Crab, the nimble Hunter, or the armored Goliath.
For those who’d rather command their forces from a distance, the esteemed role of Commander awaits you in the relative safety of orbit. Deploy Harvesters to silica crystal fields, hiding the valuable resources you’re after. Construct and place immense structures to produce and dispatch units that will dominate the battlefield.
Key Features
- First/third-person shooter – control any character, creature, or vehicle. You can leave the commanding to the AI.
- Choose from 6 unique locations to play on.
- Immerse yourself in 3 engaging game modes.
- Singleplayer and multiplayer options – play alone or with up to 12 people in Strategy mode and 32 in Arena mode.
- As a human, produce and select from 5 infantry classes and 11 distinct vehicles.
- As an alien, spawn and shift between 8 different creatures.
Game Discussion
Steam User 31
It needs better optimization and stronger communication with its fans and community. Otherwise, it’s a great game with incredible potential to make it big. However, if the developers don’t focus on optimization and raising awareness, it could struggle to reach the audience it deserves.
Everyone I talk to or even those I’ve gotten the game for has never heard of Silica. I want this game to succeed so badly, but I’m honestly not sure what the future holds. Things aren’t looking great right now, but if I were part of the team working with these amazing people, I know I could help make a real difference.
Steam User 28
game is high concept; futuristic; heartfelt; made with love; the developer is Solo. Needs a lot of support and more collaboration! However this is exactly the type of game that could go on to DESTROY the Battle Royale hierarchy like Helldivers if it had many many more thousands of work hours in development. The Art is there. The gameplay is there. The RTS features excel. It just needs love and care. Better map development emphasizing what RTS games have learned from the 30 years of creation: simplicity is best. If this was Game Development Tycoon, this game scores all B+ across the board at the time of writing this (7/24/25). Definitely buy it and go play it!
Steam User 16
Ok as someone who grew up playing games like Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Praetorians, BFME, Empire Earth, etc.. This game has the potential to be greater than all of those games. Crazy I know but the developers have a really good foundation here.
The game looks beautiful and very atmospheric. I love the soundtrack, it's so damn good and adds to the immersion when you are in FPS mode. Speaking of FPS mode, I think the future of RTS games really is having a nice blend of FPS in it while still having a Commander role over troops and production. This game has just that. The devs also update this on the regular showing true passion and a care for their product. Now is this game perfect? No, not by any means. But the ceiling this game could reach is up there!
This game is suffering from publicity sadly, it needs some kind of a sponsored streamer buff at this point because I can personally tell you the times I do get into games with a good sized lobby, it is some of the most fun I have ever had in an RTS game.
Now, to the developers, if you guys read this. Some things I would 100% put in the next update and I think is generally needed to take this game a step forward.
1) Troop formations. This is a must. Plain and simple. We need to put our troops in some sort of a variety of formations. Not only will this help with pathing issues but it allows us to strategically maneuver troops better.
2) Attack move function. This is a tride and true command to have in an RTS game. Add it.
3) Lastly, I'm sure its coming but, there needs to be better variations of the two human factions. They are just too similar and lack any degree of differences in appearance or functionality.
I love the new modes they are bringing out but to take this game to the next level, I think they need to hunker down and really smooth out the rough edges on the RTS side of it before they continue on with new game modes and such.
I still give this game a thumbs up because it is still really fun, in its current state. If you ever enjoyed just randomly hopping on Starcraft or Warcraft back in the day and queing up some custom games going against AI or friends, this game already has that down. I still recommend!
Steam User 9
Beautiful graphics and excellent sound design makes the game fun to watch, but the FPS/RTS elements make it even more fun to play. The battles are massive and very engaging, and all for a very reasonable price.
Steam User 5
Great game, needs a bit of polish.
AI is pretty bad, way too easy too.
Performance becomes horrific after a bit (using 14GB of my 32GB of RAM!)
I wish there were points on the map to capture that allows for certain tech to be unlocked.
Steam User 10
RTS + FPS in a perfect setting for it. Def has its issues with unit pathing and key RTS components such as formations, unit splitting, etc. The dev team has announced they're aware and are actively working towards it.
Steam User 4
Dedicated Servers are the worst I've ever seen, causing a lot of lag and breaking AI to the core (e. g. harvestors). My Swiss friend created his own server, with the best ping I could ever experience, and all the issues were gone. Except that I still don't know how to repair units (as commander) and pressing the "Delete" button doesn't seem to work on buildings.
The game itself is a lot of fun and fans of FPS and RTS will get their fair share.
Please add mapvotes and surrender function. Improve AI so it makes fun to play PvE too. Thanks.