Shadows over Sol was first published by Tab Creations in 2015, well before Mothership (2018), the Expanse RPG (2018) or Free League's Alien RPG. It was by no means the first science fiction horror RPG, but it came a little before the current wave of RPGs that are either directly inspired by Alien or indirectly by movies inspired by Alien. It feels like it was either a little to early or a little to late to receive the acolades it deserves. A second edition is being kickstarted now, with a free quickstarter as a taster, so it's a good time to have a look ... I'm still on the fence about this one, but at ther very least, it deserves attention.
Going by the quickstarter, the setting hasn't changed much from the first edition: 200 years from now, humanity has a few footholds in the Sol system (on Mars, in the asteroid belt, on the Jupiter moons). Society is cyberpunk-ish, with corporate control and people identifying more with their online tribe than with any of the rudimentary national states. Unitech, one of the big, mean corporations is doing a lot of secret experiments to create bioweapons, which is one source of the horror element of the setting (though there's also things like mind-controlling alien microorganisms and malevolent AI). There isn't really a big, overarching mythology behind all of it, more the idea that if you're working out in the black, you'll run into something horrifying on a regular basis.
The overall aesthetics is hard-sf, combined with scenarios that feel like a lot of the better and original Alien imitators, which is how I like it (I've praised Against the Darkmaster for feeling like Tolkien Epigones: The RPG, and I'd just as well praise Shadows over Sol in a similar manner). I'd play this over any official Alien (or Expanse) RPG simply for its freedom to add a few twists and not making me feel constricted by canon.
The rules of the current edition feel a little bit like a streamlined Cyberpunk 2020: It's classless, D10 roll high, Attribute + skill, no levels. The first edition ran on playing cards (which remain as an option) and had a really nifty experience system wherer you actually wrote down something you had learned under a fitting skill and it would help you when you tried something similar; when you had five of these experiences, you'd erase them and your skill would go up by one. I'm not sure if it will work this way in the new edition, since advancement is outside of the scope of the quickstarter.
Generally, the system feels pretty 90s/early 2000s in a good way: Unified mechanics, relatively high customizability, with a lot of the bloat of those times stripped away. Nothing particularly exciting, but neither are some other evergreen systems like Savage Worlds. I never played first (or 2nd) edition, though.
The quickstarter comes with an adventure (I think it's the same one as in the first edition's QS), which is your basic you wake up with memory loss from cold storage, something is aboard the ship, and after a while, everyone is starting to remember their dirty little secrets ... it's well constructed and I can see it shine as a one-shot with PvP elements, though it lacks a certain spark - the horror threat at its core feels kind of perfunctory and is the least interesting part of the scenario. There's loads of other SoS scenarios for the first edition out there, though, including two big campaigns, that run the gamut of scifi horror/action. The interstellar sleepership campaign Siren's Call has been sitting on my shelf for quite a while now, and while I never read it back to back, it features some seriouly horrific and well thought-out concepts of alien ecologies.
If I don't sound blown away, it's mainly because the system (especially without the playing cards) looks just good, but not very interesting, and the setting feels a little outdated by now in it's depiction of a networked world and artificial intelligence. And also because I'm not a big fan of the art direction - the 2nd edition looks better than the first, but it's still kind of bland. Like the system, it's just kind of there and trying to look cool, which, admittedly, it kind of does.
On the positive side, this is the kind of RPG that provides me with exactly the level of detail that someone like me who grew up on 90s fare needs to feel comfortable. Something like Mothership might look cooler and set your own creativity on fire, but if you're looking for solid setting material, it's just confusing. It's just not what it's made for. SoS, on the other hand: A solid system with solid setting material, keeping things grounded in the zero-g of the black void.
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