Solstice is an isometric-perspective puzzle game in which the player controls the wizard Shadax, who must navigate 250 rooms within the fortress Kâstleröck and assemble the six pieces of the Staff of Demnos to defeat the baron Morbius and rescue the princess Eleanor.

[4] Many of the fortress's rooms feature hazards such as floors covered in spikes, conveyor belts, vanishing bridges and tiles, and floating mines, and may also be inhabited by antagonistic creatures such as trolls, giant spiders and demons.

[4] On the eve of the winter solstice, Morbius the Malevolent kidnaps Eleanor, Princess of Arcadia, to sacrifice her ritually and become the Evil Baron of Darkness.

[8] The development of Solstice was initiated by the programmer Mike Webb of Software Creations,[9][10] who desired to create a Knight Lore-style isometric title for the NES.

Mark Wilson, having previously worked as a programmer and a graphics artist for the company, saw Webb's proposal as an opportunity to attempt the role of a video game designer.

All the game's item positions and events were placed on a "master map" hand-drawn on a very large sheet of graph paper, and were based on Wilson's understanding of what the player might think or need at any particular point.

This detailed approach put Wilson at odds with Webb, who failed to see why such an amount of time would be taken to design a game as opposed to expediently inserting rooms into a map at random.

Out of guilt for their furious arguments and pleasure with the final product, Wilson would ultimately give Webb a co-designer credit in the game's attract mode screens.

[12] On his approach to the score, Follin commented that the "folk" melody style he had previously used for Ghouls 'n Ghosts was particularly suited for Solstice due to the game's fantasy-oriented title and setting.

[11] While Follin retrospectively identified the title theme to be his favourite among his own compositions,[13] he felt that his work on the in-game music could have been improved to be "a lot more spacious and interesting", as it "looped too short and became irritating quite quickly".

[12] While Solstice was given an early demonstration to Nintendo,[10] Software Creations owner Richard Kay grew impatient and quickly sold the game's North American publishing rights to CSG Imagesoft.

[11] Wilson spent the game's development time attempting to obtain a contract from Software Creations covering his work on Solstice, only to be given verbal promises about the percentage of the profits he would receive.

[2] CSG's advertisement campaign for Solstice in North America consisted of a photograph of what Wilson described as "an oiled-up bodybuilder with long hair wearing dayglo pink posing trunks", which he called "embarrassingly bad".

Matt Regan, also of Mean Machines, stated that while Solstice is a challenging game that "puzzle fans should find interesting", "the excitement fades" as "shifting blocks to stand on or to prevent the attacks of a nasty becomes boring".

[1] Robin Wyles of Raze compared the game's visuals and gameplay to those of Cadaver, and saw Solstice as "an admirable attempt to relive the Knight Lore days" that was "quite refreshing" in the face of the NES's lack of isometric-perspective titles, but argued that the game's quantity of puzzles negatively impacted their variety, and felt that the puzzles were "a bit too easy to solve, which reduces its long-term appeal".

Leadbetter proclaimed that "the renowned Tim Follin comes up trumps yet again with some brilliant atmospheric scores", and both he and Glancey, along with Rignall,[3] considered the soundtrack to be some of the best they had heard on the NES.

He additionally described the game's primary background track as "considerably more mellow but no less proficient and listenable", and preferred its presence as in-game music "because there's no way I could play ANYTHING with that title screen going nuts".

[24] Nate Andrews of Nintendo World Report said that "the regality of the opening track provides a fantastic build up for the ensuing blast, which nearly forces you to take a knee under its spectacle before dropping into extended, kicking jig, then moving into the rest of the prog-y soundtrack".

[25] Layton Shumway of VentureBeat remarked that the theme "sounds like a lost track from a Yes album" and that it "psyches you out with its single-note fanfare intro, instantly kicks into high gear with cascading synth lines, then settles into a propulsive 6/8 rock beat".

[33][34] Hiroshi Minagawa enjoyed Solstice and its quarter-view perspective served as inspiration for a prototype design he showcased to Yasumi Matsuno, which formed the technical foundation for Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.