Devolver Digital are auteurs of type. It is a status the writer has cultivated over the course of 15 years—from the gloriously bloodsoaked Hotline Miami to the ridiculously macabre Carrion—and when you, too, really feel like life is healthier with a rhapsodically gory indie mission available, then you definately’ll be happy to know that Children of the Solar is the perfect harbinger of Devolver’s legacy. Limbs will fly, mind matter will splatter, the squeamish might be appalled, however like so many of the firm’s hits, a rock-solid design basis ties every part collectively.
Take into account Children of the Solar to be one thing like Riot’s Sniper Elite. You are taking management of a girl who has escaped the clutches of a sinister cult. To get her revenge, she has brandished a long-range rifle, with the intention of murdering the principal members of the order, one after the other. Every degree begins with you positioning our protagonist at the most well-liked vantage to prey upon a mingling sect of goons. Pull the set off, and the digital camera jumps to the crown of the bullet zooming by way of the setting, till it meets its fleshy vacation spot.
However this is the catch. Children of the Solar provides you precisely one bullet to fireplace. After discharging it, you will then take management of the similar shell, which have to be redirected into the different targets. The bullet pinballs round a cult encampment, powered by destiny or telekinesis. In apply, that makes Children of the Solar far more of a puzzle recreation than a shooter. To succeed, it’s essential to map out the geometry to make sure that everybody you need lifeless is in clear line of sight.
When Children of the Solar all comes collectively, it brings to thoughts some of the most devious contraptions in the 2016 cult-classic Superhot—an FPS structured round the concept that the enemies in your wake solely transfer if you do. Positive sufficient, as you proceed to overcome ranges, your one-woman-army will slowly unlock new tips. (Finally you can redirect your single bullet in the center of its flight, akin to the stupendously dumb handgun acrobatics in Needed.) So Children of the Solar is a way more introspective recreation than it might sound on first blush. Cracking it’s like cracking a very satisfying Bejeweled chain, or the spatial riddles in Cocoon. Sure, if you make contact, blood and guts will slather the display screen. However solely pondering players will obtain that reward.
And but, Children of the Solar continues to be wreathed with an unimaginable aesthetic. The recreation’s sole designer, René Rother, has provide you with a very brutal world. Our cultists are hiding out in darkish forests and dilapidated farmhouses, rendered with the greasy, jagged filth of Nineteen Nineties comedian books—the place the supersaturated colours appear to bleed into each other. The traditional Sniper Elite bullet-time, the place gamers are served the exact anatomic injury they’ve dealt to an unsuspecting baddie, has additionally been replicated. If you’re right here to see heads explode and arms be severed, Children of the Solar has your again. Puzzle video games can sometimes change into staid and samey in repeat doses, however Devolver’s newest is so eye-catching that I doubt it’ll undergo from that downside.
There’s a story right here as nicely, albeit one which appears to be intentionally minimalist and largely informed by way of wordless, hyperspeed cutscenes. (I did not glean a lot, nevertheless it goes with out saying that the individuals who make up this cult are nasty characters.) Nevertheless, the zones in Children of the Solar are finely detailed, and I obtained the sense that as gamers go digging, they may discover themselves digging up a meaty narrative throughline hiding in plain sight. Children of the Solar seems to be a really wealthy textual content. Let’s hope Devolver can comply with by way of.