Today we’re looking at Fort Solis, the new thriller game from new indie developers Fallen Leaf & Black Drakkar Games and publisher Dear Villagers. Guess where it takes place? That’s right Mars! You play Jack Leary, an engineer working with his partner Jess Appleton when he receives a distress call from Fort Solis. With no response from the fort, it’s time to go investigate, so Jack heads over to find out what’s going on and who’s in trouble.
Fort Solis is an intensive narrative-driven game that focuses on single player exploration. This isn’t your typical space monster experience either. Instead of the run-n-gun stuff you expect from dark space titles, this is a psychological thriller where you search Fort Solis, looking for clues to what happened and slowly piecing together the story from video logs, audio files, and more than a bit of joking from Jess over the radio. Now, that doesn’t sound like anything too exciting yet, does it?
Don’t worry, Fort Solis is nothing if not unexpected. Remember, this experience is more of an interactive mystery than a typical game and it’s designed to be episodic, slowly ramping up the tension. Prepare for a short experience as well as completing the game, even if you take your time and find everything is only going to take you around 6 hours and if you blaze through, possibly even less. But that brevity belies a deep and interesting experience that is not to be missed.
The vast majority of Fort Solis consists of guiding Jack around the base and finding your way around the lockdown at Fort Solis. There are clues everywhere but it’s unclear exactly what is happening and you’ll have to pay close attention to video logs, emails, security camera footage and more in order to proceed. This isn’t a hard game by any means either. Walking around and interacting with things as Jack and Jess talk is both entertaining and incredibly well-scripted and the mystery of what happened to the inhabitants of Fort Solis is definitely intriguing. What you’ll quickly find however is that this might be able to be called a horror walking simulator as much as a game.
The only real gameplay in Fort Solis aside from solving some simple puzzles are a variety of Quick Time Events (stop groaning). Nobody loves QTEs but they seem to work fairly well in Fort Solis and they add a small degree of variation and interactivity in some of the more action-packed cut scenes. They do tend to be particularly fast QTEs though and hitting all the points almost requires advance knowledge of what events are going to hit. Fortunately, the QTEs are all static and Fort Solis doesn’t save automatically when choices are made, allowing you to reload from the last autosave and retry a QTE if you’re unhappy with the result. The story is going to progress pretty much the same way no matter what but there’s a sense of failure when you miss that rapid button press that some players might want to avoid.
At this point you’re probably thinking that between quick time events and less than a six hour runtime, you might as well move on, but you’d be wrong. You see, the script for Fort Solis is utterly fantastic and the world building and storytelling here is top tier. On top of that, the voice acting from every single character is ridiculously good as well. What this means for you as a player is that after an initial adjustment period to the pacing and approach to Fort Solis, you’re going to be absolutely hooked. That’s not a statement to be made lightly either and this type of game is definitely not for everyone, but the sheer skill put into this game broadens its appeal significantly and we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.
Unquestionably, Fort Solis is an absolutely gorgeous game. It’s honestly astonishing how good the game looks on the PS5. That’s partly because this is an incredibly talented crew and partly because the game uses the new Unreal 5 engine to really maximize the game’s visuals. Wait until you see the facial expressions here. Fort Solis manages to pull off incredibly subtle facial shifts that slowly demonstrate emotional states and clearly map out the feelings characters are having without even saying a word. Combined with the voice acting, the effect is truly impressive. Usually characters feel a bit wooden and stilted but not in Fort Solis.
On top of that, every aspect of the base and design work is utterly gorgeous with a wealth of detail that’s hard to ignore. At first, you honestly don’t know where to look inside Fort Solis because everything looks so damn realistic. It’s quite the experience and the visuals are further accentuated by the lack of load times in the game. On the PS5, transition areas like airlocks are clearly used as load buffers but the effect is minimal and the feel of actually exploring is heightened by this clever use of programming. Even as you acclimate to the look of Fort Solis, you’ll still be impressed by the wide range of visuals included in the game and the thoughtful detail that seems to have gone into every screen, wall, room, and area of the base.
But the immersion wouldn’t be complete without accompanying audio and the game has you covered there as well. Several veteran voice actors lend their talents to Fort Solis including Julia Brown, Troy Baker, and Roger Clark. We’ll let you look them up if you want but suffice it to say that you’re likely familiar with their work. The stellar voice work is accompanied by a bevy of excellent sound effects and a really solid background score as well. Searching an abandoned based covered in blood isn’t really going to be the same if the sound doesn’t keep pace with the story after all. Every creak, rattle, and Martian windstorm is echoed throughout the base, amping things up as the tension builds.
That’s not to say that Fort Solis is flawless of course. Interaction points are occasionally hard to get your cursor onto and the response time on the PS5 is a bit slow. It’s hard to say whether that is an intentional design or limitations of the PS5 hardware but either way, the effect is noticeable and detracts a bit from gameplay. The worst part of the game however is Jack’s walking speed. At various points in the game you play both Jack and Jess and they walk slow. Like Aya Brea in Parasite Eve slow. For the things going on around him, you’d think Jack would pick up the pace a bit, but no, it’s a slow, casual stroll down the darkened corridor with flickering lights and was that motion at the end of the hall? Eh, we’ll get there eventually. Mosey engaged! One might assume the walk speed might also be related to eliminating load times from the game but it sure can be irritating!
At this point, it should be noted that the audio and video logs are mostly optional and there are some additional things you can do like look at all the posters in the game. Collecting everything will unlock your trophies of course, but not everyone is a completionist. Our first leisurely playthrough netted 88% completion to give you an idea. You’re definitely going to want to listen to all those logs, read all those emails, and watch all those videos though because they weave a complex story that is particularly interesting. Sometimes this sort of thing is just filler but not in Fort Solis. By the end of the game, you’re really going to want to know what’s going on and for the most part, you’ll get the resolution you want but there definitely are a few things that could be made slightly clearer. Guess it’s time to go back for that other 12%!
Fort Solis is one of those unique, focused indie games that come along once in a blue moon. It’s not the grandest space adventure of all time but instead is a powerful experience that focuses on emotional engagement and narrative storytelling at its finest. Players are going to want more in the Fort Solis universe after whetting their appetites with this one and the game also showcases the power of the Unreal 5 engine, setting the standard for the next wave of indie games. It might be a short, intensive experience but Fort Solis is a powerhouse of a game that will shock and surprise you!
This review is based on a digital copy of Fort Solis provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS5 using a 55” 1080p Sony TV. Fort Solis is also available for PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.