Solo Reviews

This game calls itself an "introspective puzzler" and I think it absolutely crushes that goal. Cute and fun game!

This game is soo beautifull and warm, there are some revews that explain the game more objective part so I want to do a subjective one. My experience with this game was amazing, it helped me in a bad moment. At the end of the game I cryed, I cryed like with no other game. I cryed that much that my father had to calm me down because I coulden stop. After an hour I wasen't totally calmed. This is a message for the developer team, Idon't know if you are going to read this (I wish you do) but i need tho say these words to you anyway: TANK YOU. TANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'm having a really bad time now. I love a girl, she hasn't given a definitive no to me but I'm really overwelmed becaus I don't know if i'll be able to get to her heart and I really want her. I've been watching for my missing peace my entire life. I've never been in a relashionship. All the anwers I saw was "just frends". That took me to start thinking i'm not worth the efford and to think "there will never exist the love i want for me, it's just for the others". Thank you, you gave me a bit of hope. Thank you, I could experience the feeling I've always looked for during the game, it wasn't at full strength but it was soo warm and sweet. Now I have more wish to keep experiencing that feeling and find my girl, my missing peace than ever but... Thank you, I'll replay this game from time to time as it is for me a beacon of hope. (SPOILER) I hope that beacon leads the girl who has my name written in her boat to me :) THAK YOU Team Gotham <3

Not very engaging, or introspective. Has a cute aesthetic, but the gameplay is severely lacking. I assume it was made for very young kids? Moving blocks around with pseudo-deep questions and thoughts from colorful abstract entities.

As others have said, the game itself is good. However, the major bug where items are lost and can't be regained without restarting means that I can't recommend it.

Solo is a fairly pretentious third person puzzle platformer that is visually quite lovely, but let down by fairly lackluster gameplay, tragically lame writing, and an absolutely brutal bug that will make you lose inventory items if you save the game and then come back to it later, forcing you to do the whole game in one bloody go. Positives: -Graphics- I like lo-poly third person games, so this is right up my alley. Nothing spectacular, but these graphics get the job done, and the islands are aesthetically quite pretty. -Gameplay- The puzzles are decent, if a little repetitive. Meh: -Music- Not atrocious, but pretty ho-hum -Jank- Some of the movement is more than a little janky, which can make moving about the islands and solving the puzzles a little more difficult than normal. Negatives: -Writing- It's facile, emo-drivel....look, I love emotional games, and I don't mind getting onion-eyes from some powerfully evoked feelings in a game, but this is just hackneyed, banal, and lame. It doesn't make me consider and reflect upon my relationships and how I've dealt with my romantic partners over the years. It just makes me roll my eyes and fight my gag-reflex. -Bugs- There is a critical bug that causes inventory items to disappear after saving the game and then restarting it later. I lost almost two hours of playtime on my first attempt to play the game because when I restarted the next night, I had lost the music notes, the parachute, the magic staff....almost everything. So, I started over, played for just under an hour, saved and quit to go get a beverage....and when I restarted, it had happened again! So, I literally was forced to go from 9:00 p.m. till bloody near midnight just so I could finish it in one run. So, totally NOT recommended!

Solo's a cute little game but there is a fatal and known bug, as you can see on the Steam forums, where if you exit the game and reopen it, your save file will corrupt: the game will play without sound, your inventory will be reset to the beginning of the game, and you will no longer have access to the item you need to complete puzzles. There is, as best as I can tell, no solution to this -- you simply have to restart the game. I am not sure if this affects everyone who exits and reopens the game, but it looks like it's been an issue since 2021 and the developers do not appear to be in business anymore as they have not responded to threads here or attempts to contact them off Steam.

Pros: > Soothing soundtrack > Adorable character designs and npcs > Beautiful atmosphere; it makes me want to live there > Puzzles are challenging but not too difficult > The self-care metaphors for watering flowers are cute > I want to reunite the little tapir dudes even when the puzzles are really hard because it feels rewarding seeing them reunite Cons: > The game feels very judgmental > For example, one of the totems asked me if I'd still pursue love if only pain was in store. When I said no, one of the ghost partners asked me why I'd deprive us of potential good experiences together, which made me mad. > In another example, when asked what I wanted from love, I said I wanted it to complete me. A ghost partner then appearead and insinuated that I think people who don't experience romance are incomplete. This also made me mad. > I understand the game is trying to be introspective and deep, but it's hard to appreciate it when your decisions are being judged at every turn. However, the game is still very nice in all other aspects so I will still recommend it

[table] [tr] [th][b][i]Byte sized review[/i][/b][/th] [th]Archipelago's of the heart[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Graphics[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]4/5[/b] - One word: Gorgeous. [b][i]Solo[/i][/b] makes stunning use of its low poly graphics through the vivid use of colour that really causes the graphics to pop on the screen making it a total treat for the eyes.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Performance / Bug & Issues[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]5/5[/b] - [b][i]Solo[/i][/b] is not a demanding game, so therefore should run perfectly on most machines. During my playtime with it, I did not encounter a single bug as the game played flawlessly on my system.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Story[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]6/10[/b] - [b][i]Solo[/i][/b] intends to be a love/relationship personality test, outside of its core puzzle gameplay loop, and this really is the weakest aspect of the game. I didn't feel like the game was teaching me anything about myself based on the choices that I was making and often the prose accompanying each selection was so dripping in purple that often my eyes rolled to the back of my head. I also found the game tried to elicit more aggressive responses out of me than what I would have liked. Of the options available for me to choose from, nothing was truly representative of the way I would respond in real life when in a relationship and posed such questions.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Gameplay[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]17/20[/b] - [b][i]Solo[/i][/b]'s core gameplay loop, that sees you progress through 3 archipelagos littered with box puzzles, is great and challenging fun, especially the latter puzzles that really require you to use your noggin. My only issue is the irritating way in which you are required to use the magic staff to place boxes. It is incredibly finicky and often more time is spent trying to line things up when this should have been seamless. In the later puzzles you literally have to rotate the camera around to get the best angle before the boxes will actually link or line up and this destroys some of the fun.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Sound / Voice / Music[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]3/5[/b] - The music in [b][i]Solo[/i][/b] was unobtrusive and pleasant, while I found the constant lapping of the shore against the land and the sound of seagulls calming and soothing which adds to the whole zen like experience the game tries to cultivate.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Replay value[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]3/5[/b] - Very little once you have cleared the game but the joy of puzzle games is that you can return to them years later, when most of the solutions to the puzzles are all but distant memories, and re-experience them again.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Fun Factor[/i][/b][/td] [td] [b]8/10[/b] - From a fun factor point of view I really enjoyed my time with [b][i]Solo[/i][/b]. If you can look past the flawed way the game tries to tell its story and the often glitchy puzzle mechanics, when the game works, it really works and can come together beautifully. Recommended.[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Overall score[/i][/b][/td] [td][b]76%[/b][/td] [/tr] [tr] [td][b][i]Rating[/i][/b][/td] [td]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=869453510[/td] [/tr] [/table]

This game has a good engaging story, fun puzzles, nice color pallet & style. However, it has a bug that removes key items from your save file rendering the game unplayable as you can not recollect these items and they are necessary for solving puzzles. If you are fortunate to not have this glitch happen, the game is good. However after posting about this glitch in the discussions boards of steam over a year ago (with others reporting the same bug), it hasn't been patched, so if you are unfortunate enough to have this bug occur to your save file, your progress is lost. Having to immediately replay puzzles (knowing the solution and just going through the motions) in hopes of not having the glitch happen to your new save is a fun ruin-er. To clarify, I don't expect the devs to magically fix the already broken save files, just maybe work on patching the bug so it doesn't happen to others. However, this doesn't seem to be a priority or perhaps they are still unaware of the issue. Either way, a bug that makes a save file unplayable and requires the player to restart the game with the risk of their new save also breaking seems like a reason to not buy a game.

Solo is a beautiful game where you just take a deep breath and enjoy the experience. The great art style and the profound questions create a powerful and instrospective journey that feels truly unique. The game is also filled with lots of smaller interactions like minor puzzles, a guitar you can play and a camera you can use to take photos and share them on twitter. All those things are there to remind you not to rush. If taking things slow and talking about what you think love is sounds appealing then get Solo right now, you'll have a wonderful time.