Solace (93Mb)
There are several games called Solace or with solace in the title name including an RPG, but this one is a ‘bullet-hell’ shooter; Solace - from grief; where the game traverses - the five stages - grief is said to go through, that is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It’s by ‘students’, dare I say nigh on professional game makers, at Digipen.
The screens are colored according to the particular stage of grief represented in the game, so for instance the anger stage is colored with a red background and orange shots. Sounds and weapon usage match too and in the anger stage firing your weapon creates appropriately harsh electric guitar riffs.
You play as a glowing orb with wings, flying through a series of surreal landscapes with wispy and ethereal enemies to confront. I wouldn’t normally describe a shmup as sublime, but this one is, supremely so. The depression stage is suitably bleak and dark and played in shades of white, grey and black, and in line with the mood, your weapons don’t even work, meaning you have to dodge enemies rather than trying to shoot them, enemies move slowly and their firing producing acoustic guitar sounds. When you get to the acceptance stage things are turned around with your having mass destruct abilities in line with your new-found return of confidence and top-of-the-morning flagship mood. The shooting effects change as you collect orbs from fallen enemies. Your health/strength is indicated by the number of feathery wings on your orb.
Every part of the game plays well and transitions between stages are smooth, the animations flow, and all of the shooting styles are tremendous fun; with that in the last stage undoubtedly being the best. The music be it from piano keys through acoustic and electric guitar to deep bass and drumming is an integral part of game, oozing atmosphere or tranquility as the mood dictates.
Whether shmups, even in this style can distract from or repair grief , isn’t questioned in the game, but a game like this can sure provide a plentiful distraction from everyday living, as you are engrossed in avoiding enemies and enemy fire a-plenty, while trying to analyse the shooting styles and enemy movements for patterns, while sorting a strategy to survive, let alone win, at the normal or hard difficulty setting. To do so in an atmosphere of varying moods, with music to match and in beautiful environments throughout the range of colors in the spectrum is the rarest of privileges. To be able to do so for free is just sheer wonder and amazement. Basically, it's one eye-fest with ear-candy to boot. You don't die if you play it on the easy setting, though this would in part be defeating the object of a bullet-hell shmup, but is a much more relaxing choice! Even if you just like more normal (and plainer!) survival shmups, do try this for the if not quite awesome, certainly highly rewarding audio-visual experience, as it blends into an experience and incidence of sensual delight!
It is quite processor intensive, making playing it alongside doing something else (one of the best ways to play!) more of a challenge unless you have a fast PC. You can either play through the stages in order or select a level to play. You shoot in a forwards direction only and restart a stage if you are killed on either of the two higher difficulty levels.
While not over-long - you can get through the game in about 20 minutes or so, it has great replay value and is the sort of shooter that will have you returning to play over and over again.
The game plays windowed in a large window or full-screen in XP, Vista and Win 7. Controls are ‘Arrow’ keys (or 'W,A,S,D' keys) to move and ‘Z’ key (or 'A' key) to shoot, or you can use an Xbox 360 controller for Windows. It does require a modestly decent graphics card and DirectX 9, so it won’t run on some laptops. The 'Arrow' keys and the 'Enter' key are used to navigate the menu and the 'Esc' key quits in-game.
The install routine installs Visual C++ 2008 runtime and DirectX runtime files even if you already have these installed. This won't affect your normal DirectX performance or installation.
It's already quite a popular game, and definitely one to try if you haven't played it before!
Graphically, the game is superbly artistic and this has to be one of the very best vertically-scrolling shmup games around!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMi1xOzZNf0
Download HERE
