Solstice is the latest game by MoaCube, makers of Cinders. Cinders is one of my favorite indie games, and I've been looking forward to Solstice for quite awhile -- but unlike many of my friends in Cinders fandom, I didn't take advantage of the opportunity to pre-order and get in on a beta. So I know a number of you out there have already played it. Now I can finally join the club, and I'd like to talk about it.
Like Cinders, Solstice has a number of different endings. By judicious use of saves and replaying, starting about halfway through Act Four of five, I was able to see all four of the major ending variants, although I'm missing a number of the variations within each ending (one ending, in particular has only two versions, and so far I've only managed to find one of them). The endings are set up by a fairly pretty fascinating set of twists, and the significant choices are not always the ones you think they're going to be. All of this was true of Cinders as well, but there was one key difference from Cinders: the player's relationship with the viewpoint characters. Cinders was a visual novel, but it also contained elements of an RPG, in that you built Cinders's personality through the choices you made. In contrast, Solstice has two protagonists, and their personalities are not only set from the beginning, much of their backstories and true motivations are kept hidden from you until quite late in the game. Hidden well enough that I'm looking forward to going back and replaying it from the beginning, both to discover the consequences of earlier choices and to see how differently it plays, knowing what I now know.
I'll stop here for now, so as to keep this post free of spoilers, but I'm definitely looking forward to talking more about the game, the characters, and other people's impressions.
Like Cinders, Solstice has a number of different endings. By judicious use of saves and replaying, starting about halfway through Act Four of five, I was able to see all four of the major ending variants, although I'm missing a number of the variations within each ending (one ending, in particular has only two versions, and so far I've only managed to find one of them). The endings are set up by a fairly pretty fascinating set of twists, and the significant choices are not always the ones you think they're going to be. All of this was true of Cinders as well, but there was one key difference from Cinders: the player's relationship with the viewpoint characters. Cinders was a visual novel, but it also contained elements of an RPG, in that you built Cinders's personality through the choices you made. In contrast, Solstice has two protagonists, and their personalities are not only set from the beginning, much of their backstories and true motivations are kept hidden from you until quite late in the game. Hidden well enough that I'm looking forward to going back and replaying it from the beginning, both to discover the consequences of earlier choices and to see how differently it plays, knowing what I now know.
I'll stop here for now, so as to keep this post free of spoilers, but I'm definitely looking forward to talking more about the game, the characters, and other people's impressions.
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