Solar 2 is an open world

sandbox video game A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may ...

developed by Australian developer Jay Watts' video game studio, Murudai. It was released on 17 June 2011 on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and on 19 June 2011 on

Xbox Live Indie Games Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG; previously called Xbox Live Community Games; XBLCG) are video games created by individual developers or small teams of developers released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The games were develop ...

for the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

. The game was developed with Microsoft's XNA tools, and its development was inspired by indie games such as flOw. The game follows the player in their mission to accumulate enough mass to become several

astronomical object An astronomical object, celestial object, stellar object or heavenly body is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that exists in the observable universe. In astronomy, the terms ''object'' and ''body'' are often us ...

s, eventually becoming a Big Crunch, which then produces a

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

. The game is a sequel to ''Solar'' (2009), and features most of the same key gameplay elements of its predecessor, expanded and polished considerably. It was developed over ten months and includes a score composed by sound designer and musician JP Neufeld. Solar 2 received mainly positive reviews from

video game journalists Video game journalism is a branch of journalism concerned with the reporting and discussion of video games, typically based on a core "reveal–preview–review" cycle. With the prevalence and rise of independent media online, online publicati ...

, scoring 72 out of 100 on aggregate website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. It was awarded the first prize at the 2011 Microsoft

Dream Build Play Dream Build Play (also known as Dream-Build-Play, Dream.Build.Play, and DreamBuildPlay) is an annual $75,000 Microsoft video game contest used to promote Microsoft XNA Game Studio and eventually Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It was announced in 2006, sta ...

competition, and was among the video games showcased at the 10th

Penny Arcade Expo PAX (originally known as Penny Arcade Expo) is a series of gaming culture festivals involving tabletop, arcade, and video gaming. PAX is held annually in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia in the United States; and Melbourne in Australia. PAX w ...

Gameplay

''Solar 2'' is an open world

played from a two-dimensional perspective. The player is given an asteroid, and their main mission is to accumulate enough mass to become several

s. The game ends when and if the player manages to accumulate enough mass to become a Big Crunch, which then produces a

. However, the player is free to not finish the game, and is able to stay at the form of the object of their preference. Eight different objects are available in the game: asteroid, small planet, life planet, small star, medium star, large star, neutron star and

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

.Watts, Jay. ''Solar 2'' (tutorial). Murudai. 2011. The game takes place in a borderless and randomly generated universe, filled with asteroids, planets, stars and

planetary system A planetary system is a set of gravitationally In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interacti ...

s. Life forms are also present in the game. They appear on planets sufficiently big to store life, and are represented by a variety of ships of different size and attack power. Spaceships are coloured green if they belong to the player's planet, or to a planet that belongs to the player's planetary system; red if they belong to an enemy planet or planetary system; and white if they don't belong to any planet or system. All the spaceships in the map are controlled by the game's

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

(AI), and they will constantly engage in combat against enemy ships, asteroids or planets to destroy them. At the beginning of the game, the player accumulates mass by colliding their asteroid against other asteroids until enough mass has been gathered to become a small planet. From there, the player has to absorb other asteroids to make their planet grow enough to become a life planet; crashing against other objects will decrease the player's mass. At this point, life forms will evolve in the planet, creating spaceships, planetary shields and cannons. If the player wishes, they can accumulate more mass until their planet becomes a star. Life forms will disappear, but the player is able to attract planets to form a planetary system, further grow the star by absorbing other planets, or a combination of both. The player can also create multi-star systems by selecting planets from their system and make them absorb asteroids until they become another star. Growing the star will increase its gravitational force, which increases the number of planets the planetary system can have. They are also able to attract planetary systems composed of stars with lower mass than that of the player, or being attracted to stars with bigger mass. If both stars collide, they will be reduced to a lesser size within the same type of object. For example, if the player controls a small star and collides against a medium star, the player will be disintegrated while the AI-controlled star will be reduced to a small star. Being reduced from a small star to a life planet is not possible, as well as being reduced from a small planet to an asteroid. In these cases, the player is respawned, with random mass, close to the place where they collided. ''Solar 2'' also includes a variety of achievements and object-oriented missions that can be played at any time. Missions can be found following the directional arrows in the interface, and the AI keeps track of which missions the player has finished. The game also keeps record of several accomplishments the player has reached, such as the distance travelled, the number of objects and enemies destroyed by the player or the spaceships belonging to the player. ''Solar 2'' allows the player to save progress at any point. A "save system" feature is also present; it allows the player to save specific configurations of stars and planets that the player has created. The player can respawn from them at any time.

Development

''Solar 2'' was developed by Jay Watts under his video game studio Murudai. Watts, who received a degree in biotechnology from an Australian college, had no previous knowledge of video game development prior to coding ''Solar 2'' predecessor, ''Solar'', for the Xbox 360. Development of ''Solar'' started in July 2008 as a

Flash game A browser game or a "flash game" is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Some browser games are also available as mobile apps, PC games, or on co ...

. Many of the key gameplay elements featured in the sequel, such as the infinite sandbox, were envisioned during this timespan. In an interview with FleshEatingZipper, Watts revealed that

Thatgamecompany Thatgamecompany, Inc. (stylized as thatgamecompany) is an American independent video game development company founded by University of Southern California students Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago in 2006. The company was a developer for Sony Co ...

's indie game flOw was an inspiration for him: "I loved the simplicity of the game and the ambiance." ''Solar'', released in 2009, became a commercial success; it sold 30,000 copies and allowed Watts to work full-time on its sequel. Development of ''Solar 2'' lasted for at least ten months. The game was developed using

Microsoft XNA Microsoft XNA (a recursive acronym for XNA's not acronymed) is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Win ...

, a set of tools focused on video game development created by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. According to Watts, ''Solar 2'' was "mainly expanding on 'Solar''original idea and polishing it to perfection." However, he commented that the concept of both games took several design iterations to reach its final version: "I played with many, many ideas before finally settling on what I have now." Sound designer and musician JP Neufeld composed the game's score. According to Watts, this was done because there was "no way I could do music as good as he can." Both the Windows and Xbox 360 versions of the game were developed simultaneously. About the Xbox 360 version, Watts commented that "the lack of keyboards and the aging Xbox 360 hardware were a bit tricky, and updating the Xbox version is a huge pain to do."

Release

''Solar 2'' was released on 17 June 2011 on

for Microsoft Windows and on 19 June 2011 on

for the Xbox 360. In July 2012, Watts announced that he was working on

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and Linux versions of the game. However, given that the original game was developed using the Windows-only XNA platform, he expected the ports to be ready sometime before the end of the year. In October 2012, the Mac port was announced and released on Steam. The

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

version of the game was released in March 2013. An Android version was also made available in March 2013.

Reception

''Solar 2'' received a positive response from

upon release. At

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the game received an average score of 72 based on 8 reviews. Most critics praised the physics-based gameplay and soundtrack, but criticized the exceedingly difficult missions and somewhat repetitive gameplay. However, the game won the

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

20,000 first prize at the 2011 Microsoft Dream Build Play competition, and became a finalist at the 2011 IndieCade festival. ''Solar 2'' was also among the ten indie video games showcased at the 10th

, held in August 2011.

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...

's Gord Goble criticized the difficulty of the missions but praised the game's soundtrack, which he called a combination of "new age-meets-

Alan Parsons Project The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompani ...

-meets-

Pink Floyd Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philo ...

-meets-'' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' audioscape." He also highlighted several features he would have liked to see in the game, such as a more complex universe to explore and the ability to control the life forms in the planets controlled by the player. Graham Smith from ''

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

'' was also critical of the missions' difficulty, although concluded that it was "a good price for a universe." ''

GamePro Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...

'' Nate Ralph mentioned the life forms as the only negative aspect of the game. The iPad and Android versions of ''Solar 2'' were also well received. App Spy's Andrew Nesvadba, on his review of the iPad version of the game, highlighted the overall sense that "nothing about the game feels like a waste of time or effort," but criticized the lack of control over the life forms. Meanwhile, Andrew Martonik from Android Central acknowledged that ''Solar 2'' had all the elements necessary for a great game.

References

{{Reflist, 2, refs= {{cite web, last=Watts, first=Jay, title=Solar 2 now available on iPad!, url=http://murudai.com/2013/02/solar-2-now-available-on-ipad/, publisher=Murudai, access-date=9 April 2014, date=11 February 2013 {{cite web, last=Watts, first=Jay, title=Solar 2 Available Now on Mac!, url=http://murudai.com/2012/10/solar-2-available-now-on-mac/, publisher=Murudai, access-date=9 April 2014, date=23 October 2012 {{cite web, last=Watts, first=Jay, title=Update July 2012 – What's Next, url=http://murudai.com/2012/07/update-july-2012-whats-next/, publisher=Murudai, access-date=9 April 2014, date=16 July 2012 {{cite web, title=FEZ Interviews: Jay Watts, Developer of Solar 2!, url=http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/gaming/2011/06/fez-interviews-jay-watts-developer-of-solar-2-2/, publisher=FleshEatingZipper, access-date=9 April 2014, date=22 June 2011 {{cite web, last=PJ, title=Featured Indie Dev: Jay Watts gets intergalactic with Solar 2, url=http://www.indiepubgames.com/news/jay_watts_murudai_solar_2_featured_indie_dev, publisher=Indie Pub, access-date=9 April 2014, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130615072533/http://www.indiepubgames.com/news/jay_watts_murudai_solar_2_featured_indie_dev, archive-date=15 June 2013, date=1 June 2011 {{cite web , url= http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/07/14/solar-2-review , title= Solar 2 Review , date= 14 July 2011 , access-date= 29 June 2013 , work=

, publisher=

Ziff Davis Media Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. First founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology-oriented media websites, online shopping-related services, a ...

{{cite web , url= http://www.dealspwn.com/solar-2-developer-interview-jay-watts-67064 , title= Solar 2 Developer Interview - Jay Watts , date= 29 June 2011 , access-date= 29 June 2013 , last=Clark , first=Josh , publisher= Dealspwn {{Cite web , url= http://www.androidcentral.com/reviewing-humble-bundle-5-solar-2 , title= Reviewing Humble Bundle 5: Solar 2 , date= 8 March 2013 , access-date= 1 July 2013 , publisher= Android Central , first= Andrew , last= Martonik {{cite web , url= http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/28/congratulations-to-the-2011-dream-build-play-winners/ , title= Congratulations to the 2011 Dream Build Play winners! , date= 28 August 2011 , access-date= 29 June 2013 , work=

Joystiq ''Joystiq'' was a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 as part of the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs, now owned by AOL. It was AOL's primary video game blog, with sister blogs dealing with MMORPG gaming in general and the popular MMORPG ''W ...

, first= Jessica , last= Conditt {{cite web , url= http://www.edge-online.com/news/indiecade-finalists-announced/ , title= IndieCade finalists announced , date= 16 September 2011 , first= Nathan , last= Brown , website= Edge , access-date= 29 June 2013 {{cite web , url= http://indiegames.com/2011/07/indie_selections_for_2011_pax_.html , title= Indie Selections For 2011 'PAX 10' Showcase Announced , date= 9 July 2011 , access-date= 2 July 2013 , work= IndieGames.com , first= Tim , last= W. {{cite web , url= http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/solar-2 , title= Solar 2 for PC Reviews, access-date= 29 June 2013, work=

, publisher=

CBS Interactive Paramount Streaming (formerly CBS Digital Media Group, CBS Interactive, ViacomCBS Streaming), a division of Paramount Global, oversees the company’s streaming technology and offers direct-to-consumer services, free, premium and pay. These incl ...

{{cite web , url=http://www.pcgamer.com/review/solar-2-review/ , title= Solar 2 review , work=

, date= 14 August 2011 , access-date= 29 June 2013 , first= Graham , last= Smith {{cite web , url= http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/221143/review-solar-2-pc/ , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20111129051812/http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/221143/review-solar-2-pc/ , title= Review: Solar 2 (PC) , date= 14 July 2011 , archive-date= 29 November 2011 , work=

, first= Nate , last= Ralph , publisher=

IDG International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...

{{Cite web , url= http://www.appspy.com/review/6714/solar-2 , title= Solar 2 iPad Review , date= 13 February 2013 , access-date= 2 July 2013 , work= App Spy , first= Andrew , last= Nesvadba 2011 video games Android (operating system) games Indie video games IOS games Linux games MacOS games Open-world video games Single-player video games Video games developed in Australia Windows games Xbox 360 Live Indie games Video game sequels