Solarpunk Review – No Flare

It feels like a dozen or more survival/crafting/base-building games appear on Steam every week, making it one of the hardest genres to stand out in. While the prospect of a cozy base-builder focused on green development sounded great on paper, unfortunately Solarpunk lacks any sense of progression, any moment of fun, and a single unique feature.

First off, Solarpunk has absolutely no story. There’s no characters to meet, no lore to discover, and nothing in the background to put together. The game makes this plain on their Steam page, which I suggest any potential buyers read through. There is no campaign, and as a result no sense of progression. New areas don’t offer anything new to find except a few new materials to mine. At no point did I ever feel like I had actually done anything. All these things are true of Minecraft as well, and yet the crafting part of that game yields results which are their own form of progression just by building. Solarpunk feels like a job, and perhaps the lack of reward for player creativity is why.

You’ll be dropped into a blank, visually stunning world occupied by nothing but trees, bushes, and a quiet pond. After collecting sticks, stones, and leaves you’ll craft an axe, a hoe, a pickaxe, and a hammer. You’ll use those to cut down trees and mine for materials, and then use those to build a crafting table and research table. By spending resources you can research new technology, which is anything from a glass flask to a solar-powered airship. Head to the crafting table to build these things, and then put together a shelter with a bed where you can sleep through the night. If this sounds familiar, I have bad news for you: Solarpunk stays this formulaic for hours.

You’ve got three survival meters: vitality, stamina, and thirst. Vitality just works as a health bar, although it’s entirely useless because there is no combat nor any way to take damage. In fact, the only method by which I found you could lose vitality is by jumping off a cliff and taking fall damage. The stamina bar depletes when you run, and you can refuel it with food. Thirst slowly ticks up, and you’ll of course need to drink clean water to remedy it.

Farming is important in Solarpunk, but after several hours I was still only farming raspberries, wheat, melons, and cotton. Cotton is needed for cloth, which is needed for a lot of important objects, so you’ll need to start a few plots of it early on. Thing is, everything grows so quickly that in less than an hour I had 60 raspberries I’d grown, and food doesn’t go bad. The hardest part of farming is constantly refilling the watering can at the pond, which made me move the farm over adjacent to the pond. Sticks and stones regenerate quickly, so even though I was running through three pickaxes in a minute mining iron ore, there was never any push or pull to it. It was just an annoyance that I had to keep crafting new tools. I also was able to gather 60+ wood in about a minute, replant all the trees, and wait about 10 minutes to do it again. I had chests full of wood I could never use very quickly.

Once you finish the tutorial, you’ll soon unlock an airship. I was excited for this, hoping adventures to adjacent islands would be worth the two hour slog to get to that point. I was of course disappointed, as the first sky island I flew to after leaving my tiny tutorial rock was even smaller, and had only a patch of copper ore to reward me with. The next island was more interesting, featuring a run down house with a cute robot living in it, but of course the robot does not talk and is not a character. I collected materials and went back home.

As the game progressed and I unlocked more types of furniture I had no incentive to improve my base. There’s nothing to defend from, so why have walls? There’s no danger of monsters spawning at night, so why have lights? I struggled to come up with anything beyond a bed under a room with a few plants and tables, considering the build options are less robust than Fortnite. The emphasis on renewable energy that the marketing indicated also never comes up, and the green technology that I eventually unlocked was totally underwhelming. I also didn’t really find that Solarpunk promoted environmentalism at all, as I was still taking resources by the ton from the earth to build with, and all the resources in this mythical world are infinitely renewable almost instantly.

By the time I was heading to the second and final area, I was very well sick of Solarpunk. The animations looked bad, the movement was janky, and there was literally nothing to do. I did not have any fun at any point during this playthrough, and every time I saw something I thought would be cool, like flying an airship, I was sorely disappointed. There’s a severe lack of content in Solarpunk; in fact, on the Steam page, the developer suggests that players should “make their own goals” as the game has none. This is as harmful an idea to game design as when MMO developers neglect to put content in the game and tell players to “make their own content.” And on top of it all, Solarpunk is lacking even a single unique feature.

Everything about Solarpunk screams that it is nowhere near finished, yet it is not in Early Access. This is the finished product. The animations look half-finished, it feels terrible to move around, the UI is ugly, and it is so poorly balanced I can’t even suggest how to fix it. I have played many, many worse games before, but I do not recommend anyone waste their time on Solarpunk when I could name two dozen survival/crafting/base-building games that offer all of this and more, executed better. To the developer’s credit, their list of what not to expect from Solarpunk on their Steam page is comprehensive and correct, so give that a look before considering purchasing it. I wish the developers better luck in their next pursuit, but I do not recommend this game to anyone.

Nirav reviewed Solarpunk on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.