The Red Solstice, an 8-player co-op tactical survival game, releases July 10th for Steam early access. Created by Ironward, a Croatian development company, this game is the latest Kickstarter success story clearing their goal by over $10000. This game is still in the Beta stages, so there is still work to be done, but the team behind the Red Solstice is actively working towards a full release with more features.
The Red Solstice - Gameplay
The gameplay is best described as a top-down, tactical squad-based shooter where communication and cooperation are key features if you wish to survive. In each round of the game, which lasts up to an hour, you play as one of the eight available classes such as Assault, Heavy Support and Marksman, and have to follow objectives in a large city on Mars while surviving oncoming waves of aliens. Each of the different character classes comes with its own abilities and traits allowing specific roles to fall to them meaning a balance of each of these members could be detrimental to your survival. There were some issues in the game, such as enemies, objects, or even players seemingly dead in one person's game but alive in another player's game or vice versa.
The controls begin with a basic left click to attack, a right click to move, and the WASD keys to navigate the camera. The difficulty in this game lies in the resource management and limited inventory system as you try to scavenge for ammo, buffs, or additional items in nearby buildings. For this, research into each of the character classes and what is useful in the game would be recommended, as the tutorial doesn't cover much past the basics.
The Red Solstice has a Single Player Future.
The single player has yet to be released but will follow the path of a marine named Tyler Hunt and his "Alpha Squad" as they are sent to investigate the communications failure around the largest colony on Mars, Tharsis. The Multiplayer will also have elements of the storyline.
Graphically The Red Solstice looks and plays nice, but there are some issues when too many objects appear at once that can cause some lag in the game. The attention to detail is fantastic as you explore the city; there are aspects that make it feel like a living city, complete with street lights or construction areas as well as appearing very futuristic with a metallic sheen on the world.
The Red Solstice provides audio to build tension as you play but makes sure that it doesn't take the focus too much, and the sounds generated from objects like each of your guns have an individual sound showing the time spent in creating as in-depth an experience as possible.
The Red Solstice - Multiplayer
The multiplayer modes in this release of the game consist of a single large map, but even though the terrain may stay the same, the game is constantly changing as The Red Solstice creates randomly generated events such as fighting against rebelling insurrectionists, retrieving supplies or defending an area. This allows for two games to never truly be the same as you can decide if you only want main objectives, added side objectives, or even change the pace completely and have to be protecting a beacon the entire game, all the while fighting countless numbers of enemies.
The difficulty with which you face these challenges is not only based on what skill you have as an individual player but also on the number of players you have working together and the ability to cooperate towards a common goal. The easiest difficulty is best for upwards of three players, so don't be expecting to complete this on your own, and the hardest difficulty requires 7-8 players, and all should have a complete understanding of what they face ahead of them.
TechRaptor previewed The Red Solstice on PC with a code provided by the developers. This review was originally published on 07-18-2014. While care has been taken to update the piece to reflect our modern style guidelines, some of the information may be out of date. We've left pieces like this as they were to reflect the original authors' opinions, and for historical context.