Solar Raiders is the new proposal from Robi Studios, an independent videogame studio located in Córdoba, Argentina. This team had already become known for Blue Fire, a spectacular 3D platform title that was released in 2021 and received many positive reviews. For their second project, they decided to go in a completely different direction, but just as exciting.
Robi Studios has just revealed Solar Raiders: a 3D roguelite with third-person combat and boasting a space theme, a distinctive art style and a gameplay loop packed with possibilities. We had the chance to try out the Demo and here we’re going to tell you everything we were able to learn about this ambitious project. Spoiler Alert: It’s a truly addictive video game.
What is Solar Raiders about?
“After being kidnapped by Big Boss, the Raiders must gear up, gear up and fire on an intergalactic mission to steal the Solar Core… and probably fail,” says Solar Raiders’ official synopsis. Due to its length, the demo doesn’t expand much on the plot, but it already gave us a glimpse into its interesting characters, who have rather quirky appearances and charismatic personalities. We’re very intrigued by Big Boss‘ plan and can’t wait to see how this plot unfolds when we get a taste of the full game.
The moment you turn on Solar Raiders, it’s immediately apparent that this game oozes style. The graphics have a colorful and vibrant art style, the music is very catchy, and the designs of both playable characters and enemies are quite unique. Right off the bat, one aspect we really liked was the level of customization there is for the player’s avatar, which is surprisingly deep for a Demo. When the final product is released, no two playable characters will be the same.
An important aspect to highlight is that, in our case, we tested Solar Raiders on a mid-powered laptop that is not intended for computer gaming and, however, it ran surprisingly well, with very few performance problems and fast loading screens. So, if you have a moderately powerful PC, this game will run perfectly. You can tell that it is well optimized to give a low frustration experience to all players.
For a demo of a game that is still in development, it was refreshing to experience almost no bugs or glitches, except for a brief moment when an invisible wall prevented us from accessing one of the chests. The Solar Raiders Demo looks good, runs well and has no major glitches. We applaud the polishing work done by the developers.
Solar Raiders gameplay is frustrating but addictive
Solar Raiders combines two genres in an interesting way. On the one hand, this is a third-person shooter, or a third-person shooter videogame. This means that, in each raid, you’ll have to fight against waves of enemies, shooting them with your arsenal of firearms. It also has elements of “Bullet Hell” in its DNA, and it shows, because sometimes the screen fills up with enemy projectiles and you’ll have to be careful to dodge them if you don’t want to be eliminated. The truth is that this is a dynamic and fun combat system.
On the other hand, Solar Raiders is also a roguelite: you will have to go on different raids in levels that are procedurally generated, accumulating weapons & power-ups and leveling up to get stronger, until you reach the final boss room. Everything you’ve collected throughout your raid will be helpful when you’re fighting the boss. The nature of this genre means there is a huge level of replayability in each raid, as you can find different weapons, power-ups, rooms, enemies, etc.
Combining these two genres effectively, Solar Raiders is a surprisingly addictive video game. Since it all depends on your luck, and your ability to keep getting new powers and weapons, some raids can be easy and others can be very difficult. The bosses are also quite challenging, so if you lose to them, you’re going to want to try again immediately to face them again with a different configuration of weapons and power-ups.
In our case, we did the first raid at least 5 times and it never felt like we were replaying the same level over and over again. After hours of play, we kept finding new weapons and power-ups that we had never tried before. For just a Demo, we can confirm that there is already a huge variety of weapons, power-ups and enemies in Solar Raiders. And we can’t wait to see this number grow in the final product.
It is important to clarify that Solar Raiders has a cooperative multiplayer mode that allows even raiders to explore a level together. While we didn’t get a chance to try this mode, it’s clear that this game is a lot more fun, and perhaps even less challenging, if you try it with a group of good friends. There’s a ton of potential here for endless nights of gameplay with all your friends who dare to venture into this chaotic and colorful world.
In conclusion, we were really surprised with our experience testing the Solar Raiders Demo. It’s a fast-paced and chaotic video game, but it’s also extremely satisfying once you start accumulating more weapons and power-ups to make you stronger and enemies easier and easier to defeat.
At times it can feel like the genre that combines roguelite with bullet hells has been somewhat overpopulated in the indie scene in recent years. However, Robi Studios managed to make Solar Raiders stand out, with its colorful art style and thanks to the clever decision to bring it into the third dimension, which makes this game look even more impressive than it already is.
Solar Raiders will be released in 2025, but, if you like what you read and are interested in trying it out, you can access this link to download the Demo on Steam and add the game to your wishlist. Thanks a lot to Robi Studios for letting us test the Demo to be able to make this Preview.
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