Solarpunk and the Plight of the Short Crafty-Buildy Game

I think the hardest part about writing any kind of review style piece of Solarpunk, is that it's more than likely going to be redundant in a few months. That feels increasingly the case across games as a whole these days, and is a big part of the reason why I usually wait until sometimes well after a game's release to properly write something up on them, but crafty-buildy games fit this especially. They tend to to iterate on progression systems and modularly add in whole new ways of play fairly quickly, making any critique a snapshot in time, which is fairly useless against the ever-evolving nature of Steam user reviews.

Solarpunk I think was a draw for many because it paired back much of the harsher nature of most high profile crafting games, leaning on a more chill hangout vibe vs. a true survival focused experience. This is evident in the fact that a bit of weather is kind of all you have to face as danger, and even then that can be disabled from the jump.

This is excellent as a concept - I really enjoyed Deiland: Pocket Planet many moons ago, and I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is genuinely one of my favourite games period from 2024 (which given the breadth of what came out should tell you something). Solarpunk explicitly pitches itself as a 20 hour exercise in exploration and progression, with further chill times purely up to your own discretion - which was honestly music to my ears. 

I think something that most modern crafty-buildy games get wrong is the start. In the grand arc of Minecraft, Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, and many many more of these games, the mainstay of gathering - an endless procession of wood and stone collection - is essential to start creating more elaborate materials and items, has been the bedrock of the genre.

When you're playing 1000 hours of a game, a few hours of doing this in the beginning is an immutable part of the growth experience. It's like any RPG - being close to powerless at the start makes you feel powerful later down the line. When you shorten the experience to 20 hours however, the percentage of time spent doing the basics spikes.

Solarpunk struggles with this early on. On one hand it gets the tools of building out your own home and working through the progression fairly quickly - on the other, you still need to hit every tree 5 times to gather 8 pieces of wood that get used up fairly quickly, so in the middle of doing the fun part you need to spend 10-15 minutes going and gathering materials again.

Playing with a few friends, this problem will barely even exist. When the experience you're building accommodates both solo and group play, it's a difficult balance to get right. Depending how the update roadmap ends up going, this critique may be completely moot within months or weeks. 

The cooler stuff is clearly later in the game. Building out a drone fleet, customizing your own little homestead, building elaborate powerlines using solar and wind energy. That's the magic that Solarpunk taps into well - you just have to get to that part first to really squeeze the juice from the metaphorical orange.

Slower onboarding than I hoped notwithstanding, Solarpunk is a great time. Its cozy vibes are spot on, and when you really sink your teeth in it's fun to tinker with. I have no doubt it will continue to grow into a greater experience with further community engagement and tweaking, and can't wait to see how that evolves in the coming months. 

Code for Solarpunk was provided by the publisher.