From Californian indie dev Heart Machine, responsible for the excellent Hyper Light Drifter (2016), here we have Solar Ash.
Launched in December 2021, and recently for other consoles in 2023, it’s a mishmash of genres. It’s kind of like a skating game meets the ooze from Nintendo’s Zelda: Twilight Princess and we like that combination, dammit!
Skating Your Way Into Solar Ash’s Ultravoid (innit)
Righto, this is available on everything. All consoles and PC. And you can tell Heart Machine went all out with this one. Gunning for indie game glory.
It’s magnificent to look at with a kind of cell shaded graphics style that’s distinctive and kind of pretty out of this world (handy for a sci-fi setting, eh?).
The plot concerns a dreamy landscape of abandoned ruins and civilizations long forgotten. As the female Voidrunner unit Rei, you travel into the Ultravoid (a rift between dimensions) to do battle with enormous beings on a warpath. All with the goal of saving her planet.
After the initial set up you go skating and sliding your way into the strange, vibrant, bizarre landscapes around you.
Combat isn’t the focus here, what’s important is movement.
The platforming action is fun and engaging, with the sliding and boosting mechanics offering many challenges as you traverse environments. This is how it all plays out, reader person.
There’s a recurring gameplay theme of battling sentinels. Here you have to strike a needle type object, multiple in a row in fact, before encountering an eyeball and finishing that.
Then it’s on to a big old boss to wipe that out (that’s the bit that reminded us of Nintendo’s Twilight Princess).
It’s all timing and movement, requiring quite a lot of a player for skating, jumping, and getting your attacks in. It all flows very nicely indeed and we found the exploration and discovery aspect of Solar Ash to be excellent.
The flow of the area designs drew us in, with the skating element flinging you up tall buildings and the like in seconds.
Solar Ash is, we think, a fantastic game. As a cosmic skating fest its five-hour gameplay time is compelling and we were most delighted about that, not really sure what to expect as we went in.
We didn’t have many gripes with this, although the rest of the gaming press has been mixed. Destructoid, for example, gave it 6/10 whereas Game Informer prodded out an 8.75/10. Opinions, eh?!
For our money we’d say Solar Ash is a breezy delight of an indie title, although we do think its price tag is over the top. £34.99 or $41 for five-seven hours of gameplay?!
Thankfully, it’s there on the Xbox Game Pass and, after we gave it a whirl, we’d definitely want to buy this at a future date… just when it’s on sale.
Solar Ash’s Synth Heavy Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Solar Ash was an ensemble effort between composers and musicians Troupe Gammage, Joel Corelitz, Disasterpeace, and Azuria Sky.
With some 45 pieces and over two hours of music it’s a synth heavy experience. But we’re happy to report we like it (not a surprise given the talent involved).
It has a habit of swelling in and out of the game, almost like it’s floating over the top of the experience and observing what you’re up to.
As there’s a cosmic landscape to waltz across, it does make all of this rather fitting for such a sci-fi setting.
If anything it’s a soundtrack of experimental sounds. It’s a bit samey as a listen as a whole, but has enough peaks for us to make the gaming experience feel spacious and eerie.
We think the moral of the story here is synth music is important for science fiction. Vangelis made it so over 40 years ago and, lo, thus it shall be.
