Ian MacLarty’s original Catacombs Of Solaris was a weird maze of bright colors and visual tricks in which the only real objective was to find your favorite room. Or least hated room, perhaps. The Catacombs Of Solaris Revisited is an updated version that’s slightly easier on the eyes but likely no easier on the brain.
Like the original, the maze of perspective tricks will play with your perception of space on the screen. “Compared to the original, it features a host of perplexing new visual effects, the ability to load your own images, and built-in screen capture,” MacLarty says.
It’s quite the trip, in which brightly colored screen static transforms into smears of paint and then some kind of rainbow mosaic piece. The puzzle is in how the game’s hallways are textured with optical illusions that make you question what’s a wall and what’s a hall and what winds up being nothing at all.
It’s a neat experience, though even the revisited version is a bit too harsh for my extremely poor eyes.
Uploading your own images is a neat addition that I suspect clever folks will use for creative illustions of their own. Some will probably commit meme infractions like hallways full of Shrek but ah, that’s the risk of the internet, isn’t it?
You can find The Catacombs Of Solaris Revisited over on Steam. It happens to be 20% discounted until February 24th. MacLarty has said it will also be available on Itch, though it doesn’t appear to be up there just yet.