Planet Ancyra Chronicles

Planet Ancyra Chronicles is a pure narrative experience built from the bones of two earlier Pulsetense Games titles: the stealth-horror Solarix and the sci-fi adventure De-Void. The enemies, weapons, and tension-driven survival loops from both have been stripped away entirely, leaving you with a first-person walk through space stations, alien forests, deserts, colony settlements, and military installations, with nothing to do but read, listen, and piece things together. If that sounds like a deal-breaker, it probably is. But if you have ever wished you could inhabit a story without the friction of being hunted, there is something quietly compelling here. The content itself is substantial on paper: over 20,000 words of readable material and more than two hours of audio recordings spread across the environments of both games. You follow two protagonists, Walter Terrace from Solarix and Elizabeth Woolgather from De-Void, and the Chronicles version of Solarix even adds a text epilogue that finally connects the dots between the two characters. For lore completionists who bounced off the original games because of difficulty or pacing, this is the intended entry point. The developer described it explicitly as a way to deliver closure for both the story and the fans. The honest critique is that the seams show. Critics noted that the level design, narrative work, and score each have their moments in isolation, but they do not always pull together into one cohesive piece. Some outdoor sections, particularly the desert stretches inherited from De-Void, are large enough to feel more like a chore than an atmosphere. There is no minimap, no waypoint system, and a few players report getting genuinely turned around looking for the next collectible or trigger. The horror mood that gave Solarix its identity is still present in the aesthetic, but without the creatures stalking you, the tension dissipates. Some who loved the source games found that the removal of the monsters also removed the emotional heartbeat. Where it works, it works because the world itself has texture. Pulsetense built something with real lore density, and the audio logs carry the weight of writers who cared about the colony's backstory. The soundscape, even softened from its horror roots, retains enough ambient unease to make a quiet playthrough feel like reading a recovered black box. Average playtime sits around five hours, which is just about the right length for this kind of thing. It knows more or less when to stop, even if the walk to get there drags in patches. This one is for the patient reader type, the player who would happily spend an evening in a deserted space colony as long as someone left enough notes behind. If you have already played Solarix or De-Void and want the connective tissue, this is exactly what it was made for. If you are coming in cold expecting a game with verbs beyond walking and collecting, manage expectations firmly.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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