Our coverage of the games offered in Humble Bundle 5 continues with a look at Solar 2, which has just made its debut on Android. This is an interesting game centered around the life of an evolving planet, flying around the solar system trying to grow and stay alive. Solar 2 has a neat gameplay idea wrapped in solid visuals and an appropriate soundtrack, all of the components necessary for a great game.
Read on past the break for a more in-depth walkthrough of Solar 2, a new game now available as part of Humble Bundle 5.
The best way to describe Solar 2 is that you're living the life of a growing planet, starting off as a lone asteroid and moving all the way through the stages of being a planet and eventually a star. The "world" you live in therefore is a solar system, one filled with other planets, asteroids and stars. Also in this solar system are different ships and beings that are fighting around the planets, complicating things further. You come to interact with the entities in space in different ways, whether its hitting other planets to grow larger or dodging the ongoing space battles around you.
The basic idea is that you will start off as an asteroid, and colliding with similar asteroids will grow your mass. Once you reach a certain point you'll turn into a planet, where you have a gravitational pull that will attract other objects that will eventually make you even larger still. But there's more to the game than just growing in size, there are also missions and achievements to be accomplished. You're given several missions at once, which are enabled by following arrows to a start point. Once you get to a mission start point, cues arrive that give you commands to follow. Your main goals in the game are to become a larger planet (and eventually a star) while completing these missions and achievements.
There isn't always the best direction for what's "supposed" to be happening at any given point, which can either be a good or bad thing depending on the player. If you're okay being on your own schedule and kind of wandering around, then Solar 2 will fit you well. If you'd prefer some more structure and casual play, you may have to tweak your thinking a bit to make it work. The lack of a map or indication of where you are in the solar system can be hard to wrap your head around as you float through your missions. Once you get a hang of the basic idea of the controls and what is going on when you approach other bodies in space, you'll feel more at home with the game.
Solar 2 has the components to offer hours of play time if you're okay with the "free roaming" format of the game. It takes the idea of an RPG to an interesting place by making the main character an evolving planet, something you just don't see every day. It can take some time to get into the game and understand the premise, but if you take the time you're rewarded with a great game.
On the first day of its release, Solar 2 was only available as part of the Humble Bundle. Since then, it has just launched in the Play Store for $4.00, which is a good price for the title. If you're interested in buying more than just Solar 2, be sure to keep your eyes on Android Central in the coming days where we'll be looking at the rest of the games included in Humble Bundle 5.
