Fort Solis

Fort Solis is a satisfying and simple narrative video game, with few real innovations but many themes and points of reasoning that thriller lovers might like. It's not a horror movie, so don't expect scares of any kind. It is not even approachable to works like Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol.

Though light on engaging gameplay mechanics (and gameplay in general), Fort Solis is an accomplished narrative experience. Boasting a compelling story, an atmospheric setting, and excellent acting performances, it's an accomplished first outing for indie studio Fallen Leaf.

It’s short enough to play through in one sitting, but that’s for the best: once you get started with Fort Solis, you’re going to struggle to pull yourself away. It’s a tense, haunting journey that will have you hooked from the word go, keeping you on your toes as you wonder what awaits around every corner. Perhaps its overall story could have packed a bit more punch, but we still lapped up every second of it as we explored the fascinating and eerie titular space station.

There’re a few puzzles scattered across Fort Solis, such as a room with servers that need to be switched on in a certain order, but the main focus of the game is to tell an engaging story through the strength of the script and its writing; something which is done very well. While it lacks a sense of urgency, the acting, specifically that of Troy Baker, offers some excellent moments of clarity and despair. Add in the spectacular visuals and animations of the characters, and you’re left with a solid narrative experience that takes its inspiration from television more than the gaming medium.

Fort Solis is a tremendous proposal to turn on the console or PC, sit down with our partner and/or friends, and enjoy as if we were watching a series.

Fort Solis is an intriguing narrative experience that submerges players into a well-crafted mystery. The focus on character-driven storytelling, combined with episodic progression, makes it akin to immersing oneself in a suspenseful TV series. While lacking traditional action and grappling with technical hiccups, the game's unique approach to storytelling shines through.

Fort Solis is a good horror game, oppressive as you wish! Well told, gripping, it offers a solid horror experience, albeit short, but intelligently ramping up in intensity. The fact of not being able to run makes everything a little slow but in the end it sticks to the universe. In the radius of the weak points, we will note the presence of useless QTEs because they have no impact and the card is unreadable, but everything is effective. A very good moment of horror!

Fort Solis is more like a movie than a game. Still it's definitely worth experiencing.

Fort Solis understands what it takes to create a Hollywood style sci-fi movie. A well-written, gripping story, performed by a cast of talented actors who battle their way through thick atmospheres and tense conversations. However, the dedication to delivering a cinematic experience seems to have left little room for gameplay. Mars is visually stellar, immersive and begging to be explored, yet the slow movement of characters can become quite frustrating at times, making it difficult to want to play Fort Solis in one sitting. In spite of the pacing issue, the rest of the experience is enjoyable, capturing the essence of isolation and existential dread which comes with a deserted space station.

Fort Solis is a thrilling narrative adventure. From start to finish, the tension is there, as is the desire to discover the truth about what's going on in the complex established on Mars. The characters make the journey even more compelling, thanks to the outstanding performances of the actors who play their roles. Unfortunately, the title concludes far too quickly and without ever satisfying our thirst for knowledge. The main plot only skims over the reasons for the tragedy, and it will take a great deal of willpower and dedication to try and understand the mysteries of Fort Solis. A bold choice, but one that's sure to divide.

Fort Solis offers a well-executed and enjoyable experience with impressive production values. While opinions on its storyline and resolutions may vary, the game encourages individual interpretation and leaves room for personal conclusions.

While it marvelously blows up during the final moments of its descent, Fort Solis is a mostly successful voyage. Puzzling together what happened at the station is an engaging exercise that incentivizes players to inspect every computer and voice recorder in order to shine light on its dark mysteries. Its narrative doesn’t seem to branch much or push forward in any new directions, yet it achieves its modest goals rather well. Fort Solis was misused as a facility by its staff, but Fallen Leaf and Black Drakkar have utilized it well to tell one effective sci-fi thriller.

Fort Solis is a narrative experience that we found truly fascinating, characterized by a very competent direction, by very solid interpretations and by a technical sector in Unreal Engine 5 that surprises for the quality it is able to express, although in terms of performance i results leave much to be desired. The adventure proceeds at a slow pace, although it ends quite quickly (perhaps a single session will be enough to get to the end), and therefore you may not even notice the frame rate drops, while the limits of such an essential gameplay will appear very clear to you whether it is intentional or not.

Through fiction, I've traveled to one space station or another more times than I can count across many years and many forms of media. It's a setting I always enjoy--as an opening at least--and from there, stories may or may not keep me invested depending on what they do with that foundation. Fort Solis places a small but intriguing cast in its off-Earth saga in ways that can be familiar, but it justifies its addition to the subgenre with its own fun twists and philosophical arguments.

While far from perfect, Fort Solis still delivers an intriguing story with just a couple of well-delivered characters to really sell the final product. While they make sense, some creative decisions negatively impact the game as a whole. Still, sci-fi fans will have a great time with Fort Solis, even if it takes a bit to get going.

It feels strange to put gameplay at the bottom of the list for any video game, but Fort Solis clearly made performance and visuals a priority. With a cast consisting of two video game A-listers, the game showcases what a difference hiring talented people can have on the impact of a story. Disappointing conclusion aside, the visuals, tone, and the acting are strong enough to satisfy some people. However, the gameplay is rarely fun and occasionally frustrating, even if the mood is tense and the desire to see more is compelling. Fort Solis is a hard game to recommend for a mass audience, but there is a specific subset of gamers who this game will really resonate with.

Fallen Leaf and Black Drakkar Games have done an exceptional job conjuring up a slow-burn, suspenseful narrative thriller, largely in part due to the impressive visuals and big-name voice cast. You can easily finish Fort Solis in one sitting if you lose track of time, much like a movie, but the high price tag and painfully slow walking speed make me hesitant to recommend it to everyone. But hey, if you’re into high-quality walking simulators, then this might be the next game for you.

Fort Solis is an immensely beautiful game from top to bottom, with outstanding performances from the whole cast. However, it doesn’t completely deliver on the thrills, nor in the story and for a title not entirely rich in gameplay, the other elements don’t shine as brightly as a result.

Fort Solis is a conundrum, one I think I’m happy to have played just for the sake of experiencing a new take on the genre. The slow pace of the game outside its moderately engaging action scenes and snappy dialog can kill narrative momentum. The limited and rote gameplay mechanics are only minor breaks in the plodding walk speed of the main character. The technical excellence and masterful voice acting truly give Fort Solis a glimmer of promise in an otherwise conflicted game. Undoubtedly there is an audience for these pieces of entertainment but those who find themselves entertained by this particular approach may indeed be rare.

Fort Solis is a moderately successful first effort from Fallen Leaf. It scores points for atmosphere and good voice work, but suffers from clashing tonality. Tension is often severed before it takes hold, and the experience wraps up before exploring threads sufficiently. I understand why the scope is limited mostly to the critical path, but there were numerous threads along the way I wanted desperately to be able to tug at. Fort Solis isn’t exactly blazing any new trails, but there’s an entertaining few hours to be had here for fans of narrative adventures.

More a movie than a game, Fort Solis surprises with top-notch acting and creates a pretty decent atmosphere, but doesn’t offer any real challenge. It focuses on exploration but the protagonist’s sluggish movement effectively discourages it. This walking simulator will either captivate you enough to finish the story in one sitting or bore you in the first fifteen minutes.

Fort Solis is an interactive experience that would've worked better on rails thanks to it's awful map and UI. With no enemies, consequences for failing and apparently no way to lose the "game" or die. It's a 4 hour story with no replay value floating helplessly in a space full of truly stellar games released only in 2023.

Fort Solis is a pleasant, intimate sci-fi horror, but it could have been more. And that's the problem with the game. Everything here is good, but not enough. The story could have been better fleshed out, the game could have been longer, the gameplay could have been more variable. Only the atmosphere works well here.

I am a fan of interactive dramas, but Fort Solis proved to be a hard sell even for me. Despite its potential, the game just feels empty and despite the effort of Troy Baker and his colleagues it fails to create an emotional connection with the players. It is not even a popcorn movie you might enjoy when you are terribly bored. It is an experience that does not look bad but does not really offer anything to make it worthy of your time.

Fort Solis offers a cinematic experience that unfortunately creaks due to a writing without particular flashes. Exploring the space station in search of recordings and documents that shed light on the events of the story proves to be not very exciting. However, the developers of Fallen Leaf have built an admirable graphic framework in Unreal Engine 5, with richly detailed scenarios and realistic lighting (there is no shortage of frame rate fluctuations). To counterbalance, at least in part, the uncertainties of the narrative we find the excellent interpretations of Troy Baker, Roger Clark and Julia Brown, who make every exchange plausible with a variety of expressions worthy of much larger productions than this first work, which in any case should have dared a little more.

Although it isn’t a bad walking simulator, the lack of ambition prevents it from being something bigger and more memorable.

Fort Solis appears to have been created with a sole purpose: to be a showcase for UE5. It achieves this with excellence, but as an entertainment product or video game, it is incomplete.

Great performances and some good writing, but never tops the opening scare of how much money it’s asking for four hours of frustratingly limited activity. [Issue#32, p.89]

In the end, Fort Solis feels more like a project that stumbled its way through development rather than one that confidently defined its purpose. It tries to be both a video game and an interactive work, but doesn't quite shine in either category.

Fort Solis is an atmospheric experience with impressive graphics and a slow, but interesting central narrative. But as a game it falls short on many parameters, with low interactivity, shoddy quick time events and exploration that rarely feels rewarding.

Fort Solis starts out promising, with an eerie and mysterious narrative that just seems to get everything right. From environmental details to pacing, this opening act genuinely had us thinking we had a Firewatch or Everybody’s Gone To Rapture on our hands. However, as the game begins to expand, the pacing tanks, the story fumbles its way across the finish line, and the gameplay experience makes us want to throw our DualSense off the wall. There are a number of ways in which we should be impressed by the game — it’s made by a 10 person team after all — but in the end Fort Solis is an experience as dusty as the red planet itself.

A sci-fi thriller too cryptic with its story and with very little substance on the gameplay side, for an unfortunately unsatisfactory result.

Fort Solis starts strong but quickly struggles to circumvent its shortcomings. Despite the strong visual identity and drive towards absolute immersion, this narrative-adventure ultimately suffers due to its glacial movement and finicky controls. There's promise in the concept, but a lack of refinement is palpable in the execution.

Fort Solis takes about an hour's worth of ideas and attempts to stretch them out to a four-hour walk through a lifeless Mars facility with little to offer outside of a top-notch presentation. With a distinct lack of thrills, this sci-fi thriller falls disappointingly flat.

As the credits roll, and we once again consider what Fort Solis is, the Steam blurb reminds us of another thing it isn't. A "riveting thriller", after all, requires thrills - and those, like the station's employees, are conspicuous by their absence. [Issue#389, p.110]

Fort Solis is technically great from a graphical and audio perspective. The issue is that the narrative and gameplay do not match up, being poor by any standards. It's challenging to get into Fort Solis, from poor pacing and storytelling to gameplay that is boring at the best of times - primarily thanks to some of the slowest movement speeds in gaming today. When you are in, you'll be glad to get back out as soon as possible.

Fort Solis is all presentation and no substance. It feels like it blew its budget on getting this cast to build up some hype before launch, and then forgot it needs substance to make it worthwhile. With an appalling story, bumpy technical issues, frustrating UI, and a pace so glacial I literally fell asleep at one point, Fort Solis is a waste of everyone’s time. And not even the deliciously grizzled voice of Roger Clark can help that.

Fort Solis markets itself as a thriller, but it fails to build tension or deliver interesting characters. Its visuals live up to the promise of “AAA production values,” but it doesn’t have any charm. Instead, Fort Solis plays like a walking simulator with a dual hip replacement.