Solaris Rift

Solaris Rift is a student project from DigiPen. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... certainly any professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job. Needless to say if an educational institution taught me incorrectly on purpose, I'd ask for my money back. This year the students made a contentless roguelike card game with a sci-fi narrative. You play through variable encounters against enemies like storm drones and venomous creatures. The gameplay revolves around strategic card use, with over 50 unique cards and 12 card mechanics... which isn't very much at all compared to professionally developed CCGs like Slay the Spire and Hearthstone. But that's what you should expect from a student project... an incomplete, shallow experience that wasn't made for gamers, it was made so the students can pat themselves on the back. We have to ques…

I faltered my endurance after failing the boss fight and learning that the game is entirely devoid of checkpoints, but this undue pressure caused me to make better use of placing cards to avoid unnecessary damage and swapping placements within a column. I fear that I'm too used to older formats of mana where I can eventually accumulate more than I'll ever need; I'll admit that more than once I picked up the mana vial card, but since it has no target it's impossible to set back into my hand, and I would end up consuming it for no reason. The game is an excuse to examine why its genre is such a rare case amongst the school library; in the case of Grain moods, there's a disciplinary distribution that shifts a lot of weight onto the minute aspects of design such as text, language, font, all of which are the isolated medium of banter events. Banter is a very particular appeal that's often poorly tacked onto a game that could've done with less of it, or it is the end-all focus of gameplay, i.e. "visual novels." The greatest appeal of Magic: the Gathering when I entered was the history of cards combined with the modernity of formats, that is to say Commander. The exploration of stodgy o…

Above average for a card game, especially for a student project. It's a shame this is so short.

2 years old but a CCG. It does need graphics and vsync options.

5/10 A CCG/TBS game in sci-fi setting. Good: - free - the overall color palette and UI art are pretty good, especially for a free game - incoming attacks are telegraphed with orange circles So-so: - music is okay but there are too few tracks, and it gets repetitive fast - animations are very slow and drag the game unnecessarily, no option to speed them up or disable Bad: - too many cards are introduced too early, and already in battle 3 it's just overwhelming - onboarding isn't great. E.g. I didn't understand why in battle 3 all enemies were attacking my units first. It's unclear which units are ranged and which melee - no save/reload. All you can do is restart the game from the very first tutorial (which can't be skipped or sped up) - thematic inconsistencies. E.g. to play cards you use "mana". Cmon, in a sci-fi game? Maybe "energy" or "psi power" would fit this better - minor lazy GUI errors. E.g when you hover your mouse over a card, it increases in scale and its attack power and hp numbers go off screen. Instead, the cards should shift a bit upwards to keep the whole card visible, or not increase in scale so much. The names of cards are in red font - which just hurts the eye…

[h1]Before I played Solaris Rift, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]