Nullstar: Solus is a drone precision platformer that demands patience

Nullstar: Solus is a recently released, sci-fi themed precision platformer from Australian developer Smash Attack Studios, a small indie team based in Tasmania.

The game sees you in control of a nippy little drone, tasked with navigating through a series of tight maze-like environments —  unlocking doors, avoiding hazards and doing so as fast as possible. It’s surprisingly tricky, and amps up the challenge fairly quickly throughout the roughly 100 or so levels.

The main thing that sets this one apart is the way in which you control the drone. You can toggle individual thrusters on and off (one for each direction) as a means to manage your momentum. It’s a neat idea, meaning you can turn off all but one of your thrusters if you want to dash in just one direction, or toggle just one off say if you want to kill momentum quickly. In practice though I found it a tad tricky (and I genuinely struggled for a while) to process all those split-second decisions — juggling steering, braking, thrusting, all whilst threading your way through the corridors and hazards of each level. It was a lot. The game demands a high-level of precision, and as a result adds in some tension from the off.

Trying to get to grips with the control scheme initially was a touch frustrating, but I also found myself wanting to give things one more try in an effort to nail it. Restarting things is quick and simple enough, and it’s fairly satisfying when you do nail a complicated level.

I’ll admit it took me a while to feel in control — it was real sensory overload at one point — but, as you can see from my run through of the first fifteen or so minutes (in the video below) I was finally starting to have the physics feel like they were working for me rather than against me.

On the whole it’s a neat concept, and it clearly rewards patience — it’s possible I was just bad at it, but yeah, don’t go in expecting it to hold your hand. It’s a genuine challenge.

Nullstar: Solus is available now for roughly $10 on the Nintendo Switch eShop (and via Steam, PS5 and Xbox).