Destination Sol | a Review
originally published on 28/10/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the space-faring space-ranger space-spacey G.E.M.Simov, a fellow so skilled at piloting a spacecraft I can do it with just one finger, come to tell you about the open-source game, Destination Sol.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This is a top-down space game. FIRST, this game should work with a controller. Playing this game with a controller would be far better than going at it with the Keyboard and Mouse. Supposedly, one can play the game with a controller. That is not the case. The game does not work with a controller and one can barely play it with one. Thus, that’s a problem. Onto the game.
The Player controls a ship that moves by pressing the W key, which increases the speed at which the ship is being propelled, and then rotating it through the use of the mouse’s cursor - no clicking needed. This is a massive feature/issue.
On the one hand, it is a feature, because it might be how a vehicle would function in space - after all, there is no friction to stop it from continuing its course. However, on the other hand, it feels monstrously clunky and janky, and, thus, it could easily be a massive issue.
In any case, it is very difficult to control - at least in the early stages, with the starting ship. It does not seem to get much better, requiring that the Player learns how to deal with it, which is not a bad thing, though when the learning curve is so sharp it really serves as a barrier to entry.
With that being said, it appears as though there is very little in the way of objectives. There’s a bunch of planets, a bunch of enemies - Pirates - and there’s the Player Character along with the friendly Non-Player Characters. The goal would then be to kill all enemies, get rid of the Pirates and liberate/colonize the planets. Easier said than done.
To do any of that, the Player needs to first obtain a lot of money, which is done by flying around and destroying things. In the early game, it would be asteroids, slowly blasting away at them with the Player Character’s lowly blaster, clicking the Left Mouse Button over and over again. One will find out that the Blaster has infinite ammo, but it does take a second or two to reload after running out of its 20-shot-clip.
In addition to that, the Player might find out that collisions work weirdly in this game. Sometimes, the PC might collide with an object - say, a big asteroid - and stop dead in their tracks. They might take some damage, they might take no damage. Weirder yet, the damage done to the PC gets restored after some time, but how does that work? Well, there’s no good indication to it. What is known is that the Player starts off with two repair kits… And they might be doing things, right?
Ah, so opening up the inventory screen (dubbed Items) with either the I key or clicking a button in the User Interface (UI) shows one what they currently have, as well as what these things do. Apparently, the Repair Kits restore 20 health if the PC stays Idle. There is, however, almost no way for the PC to stay idle, as the movement system makes sure you’re constantly moving. There is also no way of telling whether the repair kit is used up when 20 points are restored in total, when 20 points are restored in 1 go, or if it is infinite. Only after one of those runs out (disappeared, gets used up) does the player realize it works in the first manner. It’s all quite weird, and while this is a Presentation issue, it also affects Gameplay, as I know not why things are happening.
Well, let’s ignore that. One interesting tidbit would be that whenever something is destroyed - in this case an asteroid - it blows up into smaller asteroid chunks which fly off in every direction, a supposed courtesy of the kinetic energy unleashed by the explosion. However, on top of those chunks of asteroid, there’s also credit blobs. They come in a number of different shapes, but mostly sizes. The bigger the credit blob is, the more credits the Player will get if they pass through it.
The credit blobs will try to move towards the PC, if the PC is within a certain range. That’s a very interesting feature - why must one collect the credits via utilizing the wonky movement system? Can the credits not have been made to automatically go to the Player regardless of distance and movement speed? Or is that done so in an attempt to urge the Player to move more, and thus get better at moving, whilst doing the thing that they should be doing to start off with?
That’s an interesting means of approaching things. The moving asteroids are somehow a bit difficult to hit, courtesy of the PC’s own movements, and then the fact that the speed at which the PC rotates - which is the Player’s means of aiming with the basic weapon - is a bit slow, creating a funky combination of factors that need to be accounted for while shooting… Which only grow more and more plentiful when we take into account enemies, for the enemies shoot, too, and they also move, but their movements are far more funky than those of an asteroid.
So this is, essentially, a means of teaching the Player how to deal with the game’s movement system and combat system without involving them in real combat. Destroy the asteroids - which means get better, or at least used to, aiming - and then collect the credits - which means get better at moving and performing more precise maneuvers.
That, however, doesn’t make the movement any less wonky, it doesn’t make it feel any less weird and nigh-unpleasant to deal with. Not only that, but it makes very little sense that the credit blobs can be shot and destroyed by the Player, and that they have collision with other objects (mainly asteroids) and can get stuck in the asteroids or can get dragged away by the asteroids. That’s… Weird.
In fact, a lot of collision is weird in this game. So weird that it’s BAD for the Player. Example 1 - invisible walls where there should be no collision. There just is collision and the Player can’t go through, even though there is an NPC on the other side of the invisible wall. Absolutely incredible.
Example 2 - I fly over to a planet controlled by friendlies. I go to buy myself a ship, I do so… And my ship is bugged or glitched, because it is stuck in the ground. I can’t do anything, because the only way to go is forward, so I watch in horror as my monstrous amounts of time spent playing this particular game are turned into dust. The ship just blows up, I lose a vast number of items, and I’m left happy. Well, not really happy.
Example 3 - You get stuck on an enemy and DIE immediately. Fantastic work, very fun!
Then I discover there’s a “respawn” mechanic, at which point I start wondering… What did I drop when I died? I’m at the same amount of credits, I’ve got my stuff– Oh, wait, no, I’ve lost half of it. Right, so one can respawn - for free - but dying costs you half of your stuff. That’s… That’s livable-with.
What isn’t livable with is that one can’t go back to where they died and retrieve all the stuff they’ve lost, even if they respawn right next to the place.
Another thing that isn’t livable with is that enemies don’t abide by the same rules forced on the Player. They can calmly move in whatever direction they desire whilst facing the PC and shooting them, while the PC needs to face the direction in which they want to go and the opposite direction whenever they want to slow down or come to a stop. It’s very infuriating to see them perfectly orbit the PC, whilst the PC is standing completely still.
Rules that only apply to the Player tend to make the Player feel bad.
Rules that only apply to the Player and then fail to work - that makes the Player feel extra bad. An example would be having two guns. They don’t fire together. You can’t make them fire together. One would assume that they could press the Left Mouse Button - which so far fired their guns - and yes, it fires a gun - one of them. Well, the other one ought to get fired by the Right Mouse Button, right? Well, supposedly, that’s the case.
HOWEVER, regardless of those issues, this game is fun to play. When one manages to get their hands on the higher-class ships, when they start plowing through enemies and filling up their inventory, later on to go and sell all the garbage they’ve accumulated for ludicrous profit - that feels good. The game has great potential to be enjoyable, though it is lacking in many avenues that would provoke the Player to go further.
Sure, one can create their own goals, but when the game fails to provide enough reason to keep pursuing those goals… It becomes lackluster. In the case of Destination Sol, the issue makes itself known with planets. There’s a planet. I can go liberate it from the Pirates, and then… Then there’s going to be a store on it.
One of the fun things the Player can do is deck out their ship with the best possible gear, then they can make use of one of the cool mechanics in this game - mercs - which is just buying a funny fellow in a ship who flies around with you and fights against enemies with you and picks stuff up for you. You can have a lot of those, and you can give them equipment.
So, deck yourself out, then deck the mercs out and go on a rampage. Cool, right? Cool in theory.
There’s no way of differentiating from your Mercs, other than their designations, and those of the same type have the same designation. There’s no way of knowing if your buddy is damaged or missing something, except by manually going into the Mercs menu and checking each of them. That’s a Presentation issue that affects Gameplay. Are we starting to see a pattern?
There’s just so much stuff that needs to be done to make this game truly good. Your goonies take damage from colliding with stuff and can die from it. They take damage from colliding with you - so it seems, because some of mine have died after slamming into me in their attempts to catch up. There needs to be more on the UI in relation to the goonies - their current health, or just a health bar over them, something to give the Player more info. There’s a greater need for controllability of the vessel, there’s a need for a better tutorial - it takes you eons to figure out what Research even is - a mechanic that, as far as is known to yours truly, has the only function of being a button that takes the Player to a useless menu. Make the S button do something, instead of telling the Player it does something (that’s in the controls section of the settings menu).
It has so much potential to be something amazing, but it is nowhere near what it can or even should be. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks wonderful. It has an incredibly pleasant appearance to it, one that incorporates the edge of pixels but combines that with great detail and magnificent feeling. Whatever that latter one means, of course. Everything looks very well defined and very crisp, even if it has that block-ish outline to it.
I can’t say anything bad about the appearance of the game. The visuals are fantastic.
However, the way the game is presented - as was discussed at relative length in the Gameplay part of this review - is very problematic. So much so, in fact, that it messes with the Gameplay itself, which is a monstrous issue. There is a tutorial, yet that tutorial barely functions as a tutorial - it shows the Player things that can be gathered from just starting the game - rather than showing the Player information on stuff that’s more obscure - such as Research.
The sound effects of the game are mostly satisfactory, for there was nothing truly outstanding about them. The same tends to go for the music, though the music has a few very atmospheric tracks.
Overall, it’s okay. It could have been a lot better, but it’s okay. 2/3
Story
There is, as far as I can tell from my experience with this game, no story to it. There’s great potential for emergent story-telling, though, yet that is hampered by the faults of the Gameplay that I mentioned earlier. Thus, this is just a game with gameplay and nothing else. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? For a moment, I considered doing it. I liked the look of it, I loved the concept, but then the execution made me decide against it. So NO, it does not get it. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. This is not a bad game. However, this game is very reminiscent of a flash game that’s been expanded in a most unusual manner. It’s good for what it is, but then I wonder whom it is for? Perhaps fans of sci-fi aesthetics will find it pleasing, or maybe folks who… Like action? It’s free, which is the best thing about it. Try it, if you feel as though it might be amusing.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes. It’s getting dusty in there, but, oh well, it is what it is.