Solar Flux is a puzzle game developed by Firebrand Games. It is set in space and you control a tiny ship out on a mission to save the entire universe from extinction. The game is set in 2107 and the universe is going to die as the stars are decaying. It is up to you to collect pieces or plasma scattered in the universe and feed them to the stars to save them from annihilation.

As you start Solar Flux, you are greeted by a screen which is mostly common for mobile games. A giant star lies in the middle with play on it and four smaller icons below for settings, achievements, statistics and game credits. Upon tapping on the star, you get to choose a galaxy but since I was just starting the game, I had access to Helios only which is the first galaxy of the game.

The game features four unique galaxies Helios, Oceans, Hyperion and Cerberus. You cannot access the later galaxies until you have cleared the ones before them. You do not need to three star every solar system in a galaxy to unlock new galaxies. Simply clearing them is enough that too if you can manage that.

Upon choosing Helios, the next screen showed me different solar systems or levels which I had to clear in order to reach the next galaxy. During the first five levels, the game introduces you to all the game mechanics and gets you up to speed on what you will be facing in the later levels. After playing through the levels, I finally managed to start the first Solar System.

You start the level by shooting from a space slingshot. If you time this launch right, you can launch straight into a planet’s orbit where you can rotate around collecting plasma pieces. Once you have collected enough to feed a Star, tap on the star to feed it and save it.

If you want to move around in a level, you can do so by thrusting but it requires fuel and it is not unlimited. Apart from managing your fuel, you also need to check your shield which is lowered every time you are exposed to a star’s deadly rays. If you get behind a planet’s shadow, your shield will continue to regenerate.

Each level will offer you different unique challenges such as completing the level while using the minimum amount of fuel, completing within a time range or taking the least amount of shield damage. This will keep the levels interesting and will not make the game feel repetitive because even if the challenge is same, the level will different next time.

The initial levels are very easy but as I continued to make progress in the game, the levels really started testing my puzzle solving abilities. The game requires extreme precision while feeding the stars so that you can ride the flares at the right angle and not hit any of the rocks, meteors or mines spread in the solar system.

There are multiple obstacles in the game that will put your skills to the test in the game. You will need to avoid mines, rocks, space debris and crashing meteors to complete the levels. The starting levels do not have much obstacles but as you progress to later level and galaxies, the level of challenge only increases.

The game supports Achievements as well which you can earn by completing certain tasks in the game. There are achievements for completing each Solar System or by acing them by achieving three stars in all levels. Some of these achievements are based on challenges such as riding three solar flares in a sequence.

Since the game lacks a proper story, you can use these achievements to set benchmarks for yourself for completing the game and acing it. They also give you a good reason to go back to levels already completed and perform even better in them. You will a very high level of accuracy to achieve three stars on all solar systems in the game.

The game has amazing visuals and sound design. For a game which is only 250MB in size, the high visual fidelity is surely going to amaze you. While playing on a big screen, it is hard to tell whether this game came out on a Mobile platform because the visuals are very pretty. The solar flares, meteors flying around, explosions, everything looks beautiful and the audio is also spot on.

We were having some problems while using the Joy-Cons to play the game where sometimes the game would not respond to the Joy-Cons. While docked, you can play with the controller and even when not docked. For some reason, when we connected the Joy-Cons to the Switch, the controller stopped working at all.

This might be because the game goes into mobile mode where only touch controls are allowed. Apart from this we did not see any other problems with the Nintendo Switch version of Solar Flux. The game supports dock mode and handheld mode. There is no frame drop and the game looks equally pretty in the handheld mode as it looks in the docked mode.

For me playing the game with the controller was a lot easier than using the touch controls on the screen. Controlling the movement with the touch controls are a little tricky and requires practice to master it. Dock your console, grab a controller and you have a very pretty space puzzle game to keep you busy for a long time.

Verdict

Solar Flux is a very pretty space puzzle game which requires precision and good analytical skills to win. You will need to work out the angles of the solar flares and the time then right to launch in the right direction if you want to aim for three stars. Overall, the game wins at visuals, audio detail and gameplay. Do not opt for touch controls, use a controller and you should be clearing the levels much easily. At $9.99 this is a decent purchase to make if you want a puzzle game that looks good and is well designed.

Final Score: 8/10