Solstice

Name: Solstice
Year: 1990
Publisher: CGS Imagesoft Inc.
Developer: Software Creations Ltd.
Genre: Isometric Platformer
Hours Played: Countless
Beaten: Countless times

To say that isometric puzzle platformers are a niche genre is something of an understatement.  They were fairly popular on computers in the early eighties, with popular titles including Knight Lore, Spindizzy, AirBall, and Mystic Towers, and there was a handful released for the GameBoy, including Altered Space and Monster Max, but only one was ever released for the Nintendo Entertainment System: Solstice.

So what is an isometric puzzle platformer?  Well, first of all, the games have an isometric point of view - a faux-3d perspective viewed at an angle, as seen in Sonic 3D Blast, Super Mario RPG, or StarCraft II.  The games takes place inside a single castle or dungeon (in this case a castle with multiple towers, gardens, and catacombs) and have a sprawling metroidvania feel where you collect items, backtrack, and open up new areas.  Puzzles involve dropping blocks over spikes or on top of enemies to ride them over obsticles, and the item collecting tends to focus on fetch quests rather then powering up your character.

Solstice is unlike any other game on the NES - so much so that most gamers didn't know what to make of it.  Most online reviews seem to focus on how the reviewer was disappointed the game wasn't more like Legend of Zelda.  The truth is, Solstice is a high quality game, and clearly a labor of love, but it was clearly intended for people familiar with the genre.  For instance, block jumping - an advanced technique from Knight Lore where you drop a block in midair while hitting the jump button to double jump - is required in quite a few instances in the game, but isn't explained in the manual or shown in the demo.

All in all, Solstice is a well-crafted game, but it has a high difficulty curve, and it doesn't hold your hand.  There's colored coded potions that provide different effects necessary to beat the game, but nothing in the game provides any explanation on what they do. If your familiar with the controls and the playstyles, Solstice can be beaten in about twenty minutes,  but games unfamiliar with the genre will long for a save file or unlimited continues.  In short, it's not a game for everyone, but it's worth playing at least once, if only for the graphics and music.

Graphics & Animation: 4 (Excellent)
The graphics in Solstice are very striking.  The predominate color on the screen at all times is black, which adds to the atmosphere of the game.  All the outdoor segments appear to be taking place at night, a stark contrast to the overly colorful platformers that flood the NES - and yet the color pallet of Solstice never feels muted or murky (as in games like Faxanadu).

Music & Sound: 3 (Good)
The good news: Solstice has two of the best songs to ever grace the NES.  I kid you not - the game is very well known for it's music, and a favorite of NES cover artists.  The bad news - they're the only two songs in the whole game.  Granted, their both over three minutes long - extremely impressive for the time - with a lot of progression and different instruments, but it's still only two songs.  Well, okay, to be fair, there's a handful of other tunes - the opening cutscene music, the ending cutscene music, the game over music - but each of those are only a few seconds long.  In short, the music's fantastic, but hearing only one song the entirety of the game can get a little old.

Controls & Level Design: 2 (Average)
The main thing that turns people off about isometric games is the controls.  Up is northeast not north, down is southwest not south, etc.  It helps if you hold your control at an angle, but once you get used to it you won't even notice.

Story & Presentation: 3 (Good)
This game has a ton of cutscenes - one at the beginning of the game, one at the end, and everytime you pick up an item there's a full screen picture along with it's name (similar to Wizards and Warriors).  But like Metroid, what really sells the story of this game isn't in text or in cutscenes, but the mood of the game.  There's no townspeople or friendly characters to talk to, no scrolls with hints or clues to pick up - in fact, except for when you pick up an item, there's no in-game text at all.  It helps give the game a stark atmosphere.

Length & Replayability: 3 (Good)
The 255-room Kastlerock is impressively sprawling.  There's four towers, three "gardens" (outside areas), and two underground sections, one of them a huge labyrinth.  Although visiting every room and collecting every item isn't necessary to completing the game, you've given a percentage score during the credits, encouraging you to find everything, which adds to the replay value.

Total: 14 (Good)