Solar Punk PC Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Value

Summary: An environmentally friendly survival crafting game... with floating islands.

3.8

Solar Slog

I am certainly a sucker at the moment for open‑world survival crafting games… throw in an element of environmentalism and you’ve definitely got my attention, so it’s not too much of a surprise that I was keen to have a look at Solar Punk.

The basic premise is that the game is a survival game in a technologically advanced world of floating islands (that’s essentially the tagline). When you first start… indeed, that seems to be what you are presented with. You are clearly on a portion of land seemingly suspended in the air, and you can make out other similarly floating islands in the distance.

With a minimal amount of guidance, you start working away to build some tools, a workbench, and somewhere to sleep (yes, very much like Minecraft… but if it were suspended in the air and had prettier graphics). Before long, you are presented with your path to unlock the next level of items, tools, and structures to help you make your way not just around your current floating island… but to get you to the next and subsequent islands.

One of the biggest gripes you might end up having with Solar Punk is that there isn’t really any story. You are just some random person who finds yourself on a floating island… there’s a crashed airship but no story or information about how it or you got here. After managing to unlock your own airship, you can travel to some islands and a store that is floating in the middle of it all. Even the shopkeeper is devoid of story. None of this really matters if your main interest is the grind of gathering resources to build tools and structures and learning new buildables. That grind, though, might be an issue… depending on your patience.

These sorts of games can walk the fine line between being more grind than reward, and to be honest Solar Punk does certainly start by seemingly being a lot more grind than reward. But a big part of the aim of the game is for you to develop the ability to build automated systems and have them powered via various methods (not surprisingly, solar being a big method). Indeed, once you manage to automate your resource gathering and your livestock care… things do open up a bit… but arguably not a lot. Your motivation is basically just to unlock the next tier, and chances are if you find yourself at a dead end… the way to advance is likely to be providing something to the shopkeeper… so you end up doing a lot of flying from one location to the next just chasing goals. This again does get a little easier with automation… but it can feel like forced grunt work.

Final Thoughts

I do get a decent degree of enjoyment out of survival crafting games, and as much as the survival element here is not overly high stakes (which works for me), the crafting does provide a degree of fun. The game does feel a little clunky at times (I managed to die on an island by crashing my airship… I didn’t have a dock on the island, so I ended up having to destroy the bed I had set as a spawn point so that I could die and be sent back to the original island where I could access my airship). Whether you get enjoyment out of the game will depend primarily on whether you need a story or any indication of lore to motivate you. If you are fine just grinding and get a lot of enjoyment out of building a house to your own design… then Solar Punk could be for you. I would probably still suggest waiting for a sale, though.

About the Author

Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.

Solar Punk PC Review