Moacube's Solstice - this needs a fandom

[sarasa_cat]

I finished my first PT of Solstice late last night.  The ending I received is here (spoilerish if you haven't completed the game at least once).

Without saying anything spoiler heavy:

1.  THIS GAME NEEDS A FANDOM

2.  If you haven't played, you can do a single playthrough in -- idk -- maybe 8 hours?

3.  There is enough nuance in this game to support multiple playthroughs and various scenes are only available via mutually exclusive choices that examine different points of view (e.g. spend this plot point only talking to Character X vs only talking to Character Y).

4.  Yet another rare but fascinating take on The City As A Character.  (perhaps even the main character)

5.  istg this game feels like what would happen if an alien intelligence or artificial intelligence spent a few years studying fandom in order to write something aimed at fandom, except it is written from the AI's pov with a twist. This is a compliment, not a criticism. omfg the handling of the tropes.

6.  Did I say CITY as a character? Fascinating city. Oh so fascinating.

7.  From my POV, the game is a tropegasm. Saying anything more would be a walk into spoilerville.

8.  Very much a game about a group of people being people (for better or for worse). Quite a few interesting pieces of dialogue.

9.  THIS GAME NEEDS A FANDOM.

...

If you want to discuss Solstice leave me a comment.
If you know someone who wants to discuss Solstice, send them over here.
If enough people want to discuss Solstice, I will make a separate post because I want to keep spoilers out of this post.

If you haven't played Solstice, I recommend it.

(please feel free to comment, but don't say anything spoilerish here on this post)

EDITED TO ADD:  A spoiler-laden threaded discussion post for Solstice started over here.

Comments

[owlmoose]

Yes, please. let's talk about Solstice. :) I played it shortly after the official release but long after the beta, when most of my Cinders-playing friends played it, so I missed out on having lots of good conversations about it.

non-spoilerish reply

[sarasa_cat]

My memory is kind of confused over the release schedule. I remember the Solstice demo (or beta?) coming out a long time ago. More than a year? Or maybe that was the demo and not the beta? And then the early pre-order folks got the game sometime around 21 Dec 2015, I think? Regular order people had to wait until 2016? I know it wasn't on Steam until April(ish) of 2016.

I wonder if the staggered release/availability made it harder to create critical mass. I sort of remember some people briefly speaking about it but no outward acts of fannishness occurred -- at least none that I have seen. Haven't been able to find fanart or fanfic, although I might not be looking in the right place.

... The game's story is very meta which, on one hand, attracts a certain kind of fan but, on the other hand, might make it hard to create critical fannish mass??

Also...

[sarasa_cat]

If you know other people who want to discuss Solstice, send them over. I can make a different post for spoiler-friendly discussion.

This is the sort of game that warrants a discussion that benefits from DW's interface: Threaded comments, the ability to add more comments to a specific topic thread, and the ability to collapse/skip/scroll past comments on topics that relate to game decisions one hasn't yet dug into.

Re: Also...

[owlmoose]

I know lea_hazel was talking about it. I'll ping her over here if she doesn't show up on her own. :)

Re: Also...

[sarasa_cat]

Please feel free to ping her!

[renegadefolkhero]

I was just thinking about doing another PT of this! I got the same first ending.

City as character was one of my favorite things about it.

Also Kasiya/Galen aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[sarasa_cat]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa :)

I have a lot to say about the city, some for an Official(tm) Solstice Discussion Post and some for a more private "thinking about media" post.

Now that I know the overall gist of the story and what the other possible endings are (in vague handwaving terms), I am happy that I got this ending as my first ending. The late-game play that led to this ending was suspenseful and had a few interesting twists and, overall, the ending for each of the characters felt good/satisfying (to me). The other possible endings leave me curious for what I missed and what I will learn in meta-gamed playthroughs, but (without saying anything spoilerish in this comment) the info that I learned in this playthrough leading to THIS ending gave me enough info about the characters that I don't feel like any major mystery still remains -- major to the point that I would feel spoiled if I came across it. In short, I like how the path I took revealed a breadth of character motivation.