Game Fort Solis
Developer Fallen Leaf, Black Drakkar Games
Publisher Dear Villagers
Format PC, PS5
Release Q3
Maintenance engineer Jack Leary is working the graveyard shift at Prospect One, a remote mining outpost on Mars, when he receives a red alert from the nearby station of Fort Solis. Suspicious that it was manually activated rather than automated, he calls in to request a response; when that isn’t forthcoming, he tells colleague Jessica Appleton that he’s heading over to investigate. With storm warnings incoming, he hops inside a bulky rover to drive the short distance to the other base, the audio score as the vehicle trundles toward its destination making it clear he’s unlikely to receive a warm welcome. The signs, then, are already ominous when, shortly after his arrival, he delivers a dire warning over the radio to his co-worker: “Jess… Solis… we are not alone!” But then he immediately breaks into laughter. He’s only kidding. Everything’s fine. For now.
It’s not the only time we’re wrongfooted during our hands-on time with a game that’s pitched, tellingly, as a ‘singleplayer thirdperson thriller’. Despite initial appearances to the contrary – and subsequent discoveries that heighten the sense of apprehension, well before we discover bloodied bandages on an office desk and a red handprint smeared on a pair of surgical curtains in the medbay – this is not that kind of science-fiction horror. We might naturally stiffen slightly in anticipation as we advance down a narrow passageway, illuminated only by the flashlight on our spacesuit, but we soon realise we’re not going to see alien tentacles bursting out of a vent, or stumble across a corpse that suddenly sprouts arachnid legs and scuttles towards us. Sure, something out of the ordinary is going on here. But that mystery forms the basis for a story that, while set on the Red Planet, hits much closer to home. The computerised voice response to your first attempts to enter the titular facility spells it out: “Lockdown in full effect”.
in other words, when game director tells us that the idea for began to germinate during the early months of COVID-19. With plenty of time on his hands, Tinsdale spent a good deal of it watching shows on streaming services such as Netflix. “I think watched, like, the first episode of everything that was on there, as we ran out of stuff
