Solar ash publisher series#
These pits, usually hidden at the end of separate platforming segments, are destroyed by slicing a series of attack points in quick succession, before planting a stab inside a creepy red eye at its centre. There’s a forgiving floatiness to the movement too, so jumping between grind rails feels fluid and less fussy in comparison to actual skating sims.īefore you take on each monstrous anomaly, you have to track down and eliminate black goo pits dotted around each area, to wake up the main beast. While you can simply run around at a slower pace, you’ll spend most of your time skating by holding the left trigger, which gives you greater momentum across jumps and grants better manoeuvrability in combat.
Solar Ash is primarily a platformer, where you skate around areas, bound across chasms, and solve traversal puzzles. The movement mechanics are equally well realised. Her connection to an ally AI called Cyd is a recurring highlight, but there’s a surprising amount of humour in the game’s handful of side quests – adding a darkly comic edge and personality to its world, which could have easily coasted on surface-level prettiness. As a protagonist, Rei is charming, understated and just as bewildered by some of the strange characters you’ll meet as you are. It’s all grounded by some great writing and voicework. The bright, luscious landscapes are offset by a subtle, foreboding soundtrack, which captures a calm-before-the-storm dread that keeps the apocalyptic stakes at the forefront of your mind. Each area presents a new visual marvel for screenshot addicts, from desecrated tower blocks nestled within a sea of blue clouds to ominous caves beneath neon-lit gardens.
The narrative intrigue works because the presentation is consistently stunning. Like Hyper Light Drifter, there’s a main narrative which provides a resolution of sorts, but it’s up to the player to interpret the environment and piece together details from journal entries to fully decipher what’s going on. Throughout the dreamscape black hole, you’ll discover what happened to previous voidrunners through collectible audio logs. With such a promising premise, it is a bit disappointing that there are lore dumps - “show, don’t tell.However, Rei isn’t the first to be sent on this mission. There are also Dark Souls-esque “Quests” which you get by talking to NPCs, but they aren’t much better. I feel this is a game that would be best told without voice acting or an abundance of information, as the atmosphere already hits the mark with its wonderful sci-fi mysticism. Even the cast of characters, while likable and well-voiced, weren’t able to get me emotionally invested. Most of the story is delivered through lore dumping - audio logs that didn’t have me hooked. The story is quite intriguing in its concepts, and the multiple endings are somewhat well-written. You’ll have your AI buddy, Cyd, assisting you, and you’ll meet some survivors of the affected worlds on the way. You’ll cross paths with Echo, a giant ghostly figure who tries to stop you on your mission to activate the Starseed, a device that could destroy the black hole. You play as Rei, a voidrunner who enters the “Ultravoid,” a supermassive black hole that threatens to consume all planets in its path, including Rei’s home world. The game puts you in the hyper-powered shoes of a “voidrunner,” one of a group of beings who navigate black holes. Heading into the rift Needless Explanations
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