The Red Solstice was a game that gained a lot of attention when it released and for good reason, it offered familiar gameplay, in the form of the real-time strategy, but layered upon it was a level of randomness that meant each mission, would never be the same. Plus, if all that wasn’t enough, you could play it with 7 other mates, giving you 8 fighters to try and survive Mars with, it was insane, so any sequel would have a lot to live up to, before it was even released. Thanks to 505 Games, I had the chance to put my hands on sequel and it has some serious potential.

The game was kind enough to ease me back into things, because while it might control like an RTS, it doesn’t play like one, because not only are you constantly looking for supplies, but you are also constantly managing yourself and the squad with you, to ensure that enemies you encounter are easily dealt with. So, lets deal with the RTS stuff first, this is not your average type of RTS game, in fact even calling it that seems to not convey all that the game is trying to offer to you, but it gives you a grounding point. You control your character, weapon and ammo options and interact with the world, just like you would in a traditional RTS, it might seem a little weird, but it works, when there are other members added to your squad, through AI, you can give them directions as well, giving you more of that strategy element. But where it breaks away from that traditional mold is that the game lets you run and gun, whilst on the go, either automatically, or threw manual controls, making it feel more like a twin-stick shooter and if that doesn’t make much sense you are not alone.

When you are moving around the maps, your character will go to wherever you click, pretty normal stuff, but you can take over manual control of where they are aiming and doing to, essentially turns the game into a twin stick shooter, just with RTS controls. It is things like that, a unique way to play the game, that had me wanting to play more and while the first mission was fairly straight forward, it did double as the tutorial, the other missions available in my hands on, were more complex in their build and that was fun. By complex, I don’t mean that I had to spend hours wander the map to find a key, to unlock a door, to save a princess or anything like that, just that, because the game randomly creates the maps when you start a mission, things are not always in the same place, even if the story beats are the same. The second mission had me attempting to recover soldiers from a downed ship, a straight forward objective to be sure, but one that required some off the beaten path exploration to accomplish. This was due to the level creating walls and barricades in my way, so while the objective marker was point on direction, I was constantly moving along other points of the compass, in order to get around whatever was in my way.

None of that explains the squad mechanics and while in the preview, they were not as explorable as I might have liked, there was still enough to tempt to come back later. There are a number of class types that you pull into your squad, things like Medic, Heavy Support, Recon and so on, each has their pros and cons, so pulling together a team suited for the mission is critical. Again, because this was a preview build, not all the classes were available and the ones that were, the game pre-assigned for me, which was still fun. The reason why your squad is important comes down to two factors, the first is that reloading your weapon takes time and while a single enemy can be easily avoided, when you have a swarm of zombies and higher-level creatures coming at you, reloading at the wrong time can mean death. Your squad can assist with their destruction, giving you time to move away and reload, before coming back into the fight, even swapping to different ammo types or your secondary weapon can take time, so planning when you make those choices is critical, but having a squad there, makes it easier.

The second thing the squad allows for, is other human players to join you and while I didn’t get a chance to experience that myself, the fact that the game allows for 8-player co-op is incredible. Now as there are only six class types, there will be some double up, however given that you can research a variety of upgrades for yourself, your ship and more, it means that your people can play quit a bit differently. The cool thing about the research is that it is not just getting a bigger ship, or more ammo to carry, but can actually impact the world, for example you can research new ways of thinning out the crowd, before your boots even touch the ground. Making those choices, will impact how the game plays out, but again, you don’t have to, if you choose not to, something that I am eager to see play out in full.

While my time with the game was limited, the missions unlocked for me were only a few in number, I enjoyed my time with the game. I am no stranger to RTS titles, but I find them to be boring at times, as you wait and wait and wait for resources to be available, however Red Solstice 2: Survivors removes that restriction. There is clearly a lot more to see and experience, but I will need to wait for the full game, given that the missions will change each time you play them, and you can play with 8 human players at once, there is not going to be any want for variety, I just want to see how it all comes together in the end.