It is hard to describe Suldokar's Wake. Some tried - check the catalog's entry for the first of the four Core Arc tomes that came only with a brief overview of the setting and game mechanics. I must say that even after reading through the whole Omnibus I still do not know how exatly I'd start running this game.
To begin with, I would have to grasp myself and then explain to the players the weird mechanics of an inverted roll. Then try to convince them to go through rather complex character generation with no simple attributes but stacks, several in-game scales and currencies and not just a set of choices but rather a whole 2D-space for character progression.
And after that I myself will have quite hard time to make an adventure seed where the game's obscure meta plot is carefully preserved, as is hinted in many places throughout a book, but with no gaming material apart from a starting adventure available to date.
So why does this book stand out? As a one huge source of inspiration it does!
The mood of the setting environment is perfect: a blend of Blame! and Numenera, an isolated (former prison) planet where nanite clouds and solid holograms - artifacts of the precious eons - can be sentient, controlled or go crazy and rogue entirely. Dark but not grim dark and very, very mysterious. Exactly how I like.
The text is outstanding: intertwined with "machine language", featuring block-charts and roguelike-style labels for maps it speaks with the reader in a similar way as does Caves of Qud treat its player. More than a half of it instructs a wannabe AI (here: Referee or GM) on how to run exploratory adventures in a mysterious and weird sci-fi environment taking into account the trope used in Suldokar's Wake as a fuel for its meta plot: the Hidden Enemy. A story twist I'd use a lot myself.
That said, I hope some day to see more material that develops and
evolves the setting. Before that, I will rather loosely interpret
its original ideas for my dungeon23 contribution.
As for occasional play, the author himself hints that using his universal Whitehack rules to play Suldokar's Wake is an easy, more straightforward option.
Agreed.