Solar Ash Analysis

Solar Ash drives us to cure a world grating at full speed.

The new Hyper Machine game, the creators of Hyper Light Drifter, seems a priori a title that completely leaves the wake of his first title, with a great leap of the action RPG Pixel Art to 3D platforms low-poly. However, beyond that area that inevitably recalls a Jet Set Radio with spatial ambience, beats the heart of a title that knows how to continue the themes of his previous work from a different approach, but at the same time family and personal.

Basic information

Developer: Heart Machine Editor: Annapurna Interactive Platforms: PS5, PS4, PC Proven version: PS5 Availability: 02/12/2021

Solar Ash moves us to the interior of Ultrapar, a black hole that our protagonist REI has launched to try to save the inevitable destiny of her home planet. Once inside, however, we find that the concept of time seems to have been lost along the way. The only way to understand what has happened and what is to come is to venture through a land contaminated by a black mass and invaded by the aggressive slag. Each area also has a unique inhabitant: a giant who expects lethargic to that with our actions we call the attention of him.

The fragmented narrative brings us by impossible skyscrapers crossed by rails, fungal caves where the sunlight or toxic paras in which water is capable of melting anything that touches its surface. These scenarios are designed perfectly to enjoy traveling them at full speed, chaining grinds and fly over the structures. The structure reminds that of The Pathless (also distributed by Annapurna); Each area has a series of infected points that we must clean up to force the appearance of a final boss, whose elimination is necessary to restore the area. The way to arrive is quite different, because in the Giant Squid game the accuracy with flow was rewarded, while here fluency is something that the game offers you as a gift to have fun your way.

Heart Machine knew that this game was going to die or live by the movement, because each one of his sections are oriented to gracefully fly on stage without stopping a second. Even the bullet time, a small concession to the speed that allows us to run some more accurate maneuvers or eliminate enemies with fewer problems, is aimed at facilitating transitions and preventing us from repeating entire areas for some small calculation failure. The uncontrollable laughter released REI When we managed to land a particularly complicated flight tells us everything we need to know about the protagonist of it, and not even the fights lower the rhythm of the movement; We eliminate the slags through the scenario at full speed, jumping and dodging their attacks without reducing speed. When we need a precision point we can go back to the bullet time to aim and throw us against them, continuing the combo in the air. They are brief and intense fighting, where each hit received is a stab in the flow of the game.

At the time of facing the bosses, the experience is a junction between the shadow of the colossus fighting and a countermelody of a classic racing game, restarting a countdown each time we hit a checkpoint. We must hit the weak points at full speed sequentially to perform a vertiginous journey through the body of the giant to gain access to the only weak point of it. Each of the three blows that the combat requires takes us through a different itinerary above the bone plates that coat to creatures formed completely from the black mass of the scenarios. In the last meeting, when everything is about to end, the difficulty is slightly increased by converting this mass into an element that eliminates us instantaneously. Disaster piece synthesizers announce the arrival of these beasts and add intensity to encounters where the authentic rival is our ability to read the scales of the beast to anticipate the next move that is going to be demanded; Each stab at the weak point requires preparation, certainty and confidence that we will know how to execute each movement without a doubt in the heart.

After defeating a final boss we will receive a stab in the health bar, which will reduce its maximum at a point. Maximum health can be recovered with plasma, a plenty of collectable that Solar Ash uses to direct our gaze through the scenarios and suggest routes that may seem impossible to the naked eye. Some of these tracks will lead us to NPCs of other species that have suffered the stalking of Ultrapar, each with its associated mission in which we will discover the destination of millions of lives through brief conversations.

Others will take us to the notes that other explorers have left before our arrival (if there is something similar to an earlier in the Ultrapar). These little writings build characters full of doubts upon arrival, whose motivations change at some point for reasons that at first we are impossible to understand. Our reward for obtaining all the missives in an area is a suit that improves some functions of the movement, as the recharge time of the small boost that we can use on land.

These notes of the story, the only moments when the game allows us to give us a break, help to cement a plot that returns to Hyper Light Drifter themes, such as disease and healing processes. Here are a less physical level than in the study debut (although some elements that we hit remind themselves, inevitably remember needles and syringes), but their weight on narrative is equally present in this damaged environment.

Solar Ash is a 3D platform in love with his own movement, and he knows how to transmit that passion with the rest of his systems. From the exploration to the combat they have as central pillar the speed of displacement, building each boss as an intense countermelody to overcome. Perhaps the biggest jump that it manages to land, that is, is to invest all that energy unleashed in telling a short but personal account, resuming the topics of its previous game from a new prism.