Solstice Quest Review
It's me again, back with the milk (another review). This time, ObserverQM's Solstice Quest.
This quest takes place in the far future, a time when humans have extended their reach into the stars, forming a vast and powerful empire. In order to compensate for the human incapability to quickly and easily expand and replace much of the crew of such interstellar vessels, the empire developed cloning technology, artificial humans, seen legally as more equipment than crew, who run and manage the vessel under the command of a human captain. The protagonist of this quest, the clone body of the escort carrier Solstice, was a small exception to this principle, having been executed by the imperial government for reasons not fully explained. Solstice's identity, her crimes, her motives for treason, and the last order of her captain before she burned the sky serve as the fundamental mystery of the quest. Now, having survived her own execution, the Solstice (or, when referring to her clone body, Sol for short) sifts through the rubble of her last operation, searching for her crew be they dead or alive.
Setting aside, Solstice's core gameplay element involves its skirmishes. This is done in a very interesting semi-multiplayer style, with a select few voters controlling their own ships during the quest while the rest of the voter base controls the actions of the Solstice herself. To balance out the lack of individual autonomy, the Solstice is the most powerful and important ship in the fleet, and as such the practical impact of the votes between the named and anonymous players stay about equal in the grand scheme of things. The combat is fast paced, with brief, snappy action text supplemented by absolutely gorgeous 3d animations of the ships in action. I seriously cannot overstate how impressive Solstice's visual elements are: if for no other reason, I recommend you check out the archive just to see them.
From a narrative perspective, most of the character exploration exists with Sol herself: being a semi-immortal clone avatar for a spaceship, she bears a sort of uncanny, artificial element about her, her agelessness and separation from what it is to be a 'baseline human', and how the people around her (especially the captain) guided and helped her development into actualization as something more person than machine. The flashbacks to the captain and Sol's path to humanity are rather reminiscent of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End if you've seen that, and, if I recall correctly, Observer was inspired by her character when writing for Solstice.
Ultimately, Solstice Quest's biggest flaw is a lack of time: the first thread is brief, the high effort visual elements leading to rather long pauses from update to update and, due to the QM's long absence from the project, none of the characters, especially Hibiscus who was introduced towards the end of the quest have received enough development to have any satisfying progress on their character arcs. While Solstice is off to an excellent start in these regards, the short time spent with these characters, watching them grow and change, really hinders the degree to which one can get invested. The same can be said of both the mystery and more game-like elements: the players simply haven't had the time to be able to fully develop and customize their ships, nor have they been able to get any answers to all these questions posed and left unanswered by the story. This is, to put it bluntly, a deeply unsatisfying note to be left on for over a year.
That being said, the fact that it NOT running is so upsetting is emblematic of Solstice Quest's quality. As it stands, it's only a single thread, and a relatively short one at that. If you enjoy sci fi, intrigue, or even just good character writing, there's absolutely no reason not to give it a look.