Solar Ash Review

Take on the role of Voidrunner Rei and journey through the Ultravoid in Solar Ash, a movement- and speed-focused, colorful and gorgeous action platformer, where only the enormous Remnants stand between you and the harsh truth…

Solar Ash is a game I eagerly anticipated. This is the second game by Heart Machine, a small studio that had previously released the incredible Hyper Light Drifter, a game I hold incredibly dear. While I tried to keep my expectations low, I was truly excited when release day came. Alx Preston, Founder of Heart Machine, had stated during development of Solar Ash that it would vastly differ from Hyper Light Drifter, offering a completely different focus and experience.

The game’s initial delay from October to December raised eyebrows, signaling potential bugs and optimization concerns. Yet, it also spoke volumes about the developers’ commitment to delivering a polished product. The game then finally released, and I was immediately put at ease by the game’s gorgeous aesthetics and butter-smooth controls. At least on PS5, I didn’t encounter any stuttering or other performance issues, making the game a joy to play.

The color palette, reminiscent of Hyper Light Drifter, plays a pivotal role in making the player feel small and disoriented — a positive disorientation that adds to the game’s charm. The world around the protagonist Rei oftentimes defies all laws of physics and logic, but is still locally consistent in terms of physical interactions and phenomena. This is absolutely necessary for a game focusing on movement, such as this one, and offers a consistently captivating experience.

Each of the six biomes looks visually distinct, too, which keeps the game interesting and kept me always in anticipation of what would wait for me around the next corner.

However, while Solar Ash excels in aesthetics, the storytelling falls short of its other achievements. Dialogues and sidequests exist but lack the exceptional quality found in other aspects of the game, rendering these interactions forgettable.

With the transition to three-dimensional gameplay, Heart Machine had to account for many mechanics that their previous game did not need, such as for instance a freely controllable camera. Such a significant transition can be a notable challenge, especially for a small team, depending on the scope of the project. I believe that Heart Machine did well in narrowing down the focus of Solar Ash: Everything in this game is about smooth and fast movement and traversal.
Rei, equipped with skating shoes, gracefully glides over clouds, moves elegantly on surfaces, and skates on rails, defying the laws of physics in the best way possible.

While you can indeed encounter enemies while exploring, combat takes a back seat and is kept simple and straightforward. Most enemies can be dispatched with one or two swings of Rei’s sword and act more as a small obstacle than a test of skill. Instead, the main goal in each of the biomes is to first locate and eliminate so-called “Anomalies”, patches of black goo which present a unique challenge with timed attack windows. If you fail to reach the next attack point in time, the Anomaly is reset, and you need to start from the beginning.
Once all Anomalies have been eliminated, a gigantic “Remnant” roaming around the biome can be engaged in combat. These enemies are truly enormous, and make the player feel small and insignificant. The classic Shadow of the Colossus comes to mind, but even the Colossi in that game don’t come close to Solar Ash‘s Remnants in terms of scale.
Like the Anomalies, the fights against the Remnants are also centered around hitting attack points while skating atop the Remnant. These creatures move around while you are attacking them though, in contrast to the static anomalies, which adds quite a bit of excitement to the fight.

The music helps create an eerie atmosphere while exploring, though it always stays in the background. The soundtrack can build up at certain points to really emphasize an epic moment, but these build-ups are few and far between.

In short, even the fight sequences in Solar Ash resemble rather a timed parkour course. The developers knew that their main weapon here would be the smooth movement, and made sure that EVERYTHING in Solar Ash is centered around that mechanic.

Solar Ash is a game that offers a fun time for a few hours, but doesn’t have much to offer on subsequent playthroughs. There are no well-hidden secrets, and once you beat the game and the credits roll, there is no New Game +; instead, you can continue the game right before the final fight and clean up anything you might have missed, which is probably not too many things.
There are only three NPC sidequests that are all rather straightforward if you take your time and explore each biome, especially as the first encounter with each of the NPCs is part of the main story progression. Collectibles are plentiful, but are also often hidden in plain sight. Especially Voidrunner Stashes (which unlock new costumes) can be very easily cleaned up by unlocking a specific suit that then allows the player to see all Stashes on the map that have not yet been collected. The game’s brevity, under 10 hours for a single playthrough, coupled with the absence of additional game modes, leaves it wanting.

After an initial playthrough, it is worthwhile to play through the game on Hardcore mode. There are a couple of changes that come with this level of difficulty, but the most significant one is that the attack window is extremely narrow between attack points. You cannot afford to make any mistakes and need pretty much a flawless run both to destroy the anomalies, and during each of the Remnant’s three phases. However, there are no other restrictions, such as limited lives. Meaning that even if you need to retry specific sections multiple times, you only require a bit of perseverance to succeed. Personally, I think Hardcore mode shows Solar Ash from its best side, as it is here where the smooth movement and responsive controls are what make it possible to beat the tiny attack windows. A second playthrough on this difficulty should only take about three hours, though, and thus merely extends the experience by a few hours.