Fun Stuff for 2015: Sol Invictus

Happy New Year, my gamebooky buddies. All across the world, a hangover fug is lifting, and men and women everywhere greet a shining new age free of dehydration and aspirin.

So, let's kick off this wondrous era with a look at some of the gamebooky goodness coming our way in 2015. First up: Sol Invictus.

Eons ago, in 2014, a company called Cubus Games created an app adaptation of a gamebook called Heavy Metal Thunder, written by an improbably-named man called Kyle B. Stiff. It was awesome. The story was dark and moody; you take the role of an elite jetpack soldier, part of the Black Lance Legion. Humanity is beaten; the war against the extraterrestrial Invaders is lost. Wounded and suffering from partial amnesia, you have to find your home unit and warn them of an impending attack, before everything you know is lost forever.

It was atmospheric, well-written science fiction. It had a great bit where your character went a bit mad, because he had to fly through space with a little jet pack for months on end. I really enjoyed it - I wrote a review of it, in fact, which you can read here. Nor was I alone in that. The app won a Pocket Gamer Silver Award

Sol Invictus is the sequel to Heavy Metal Thunder, and the continuation of the story that began there. Three years into the war against the alien Invaders, humanity manages to launch an offensive against its oppressors - an offensive spearheaded by Admiral Franks and his Black Lance Legion. And yet, might Franks himself be as great a threat to humanity as the aliens?

As I'm writing these words, Sol Invictus is just five days away from being released, on 8th January.

I'm thinking it's going to be great.

(Post by Paul Gresty)