Solar Ash

Few games feel as good to play as this, but the demanding platforming might not suit all. A heady mix of challenge and reward. Plus, space rollerskates. [Issue#10, p.76]

Solar Ash is one of the best games of the year. It looks gorgeous, its story is pretty unique and surprising, and its set-piece moments get really intense, as you might expect from skating along the back of a black goo and bone dragon. It's a nice surprise to end the year with that any "skating combined with combat and gigantic monsters" enthusiasts, which is definitely already a thing.

Solar Ash defines the new standard for open-world indie games by providing an absolutely lovely world to traverse, with a beautiful soundtrack to listen to. From the flow of movement and smooth platforming, to the giant colossi and heartwarming story, I had to step back to discover I was playing a fine piece of art.

An excellent sci-fi platformer with exquisite art design and sublime traversal mechanics, which finds distinctive ground among its obvious inspirations.

By making Solar Ash radically different from Hyper Light Drifter, Heart Machine has avoided boxing themselves into a niche while being able to continue and build a universe they clearly care for. It wears its influences on its sleeve and comes together as a cosmic mix of a few games held dear by many, and as long as they continue to do this, I’ll eat it up until I am far beyond full.

Solar Ash is a platforming playground that never loses steam, and it hides a memorable story of unfathomable tragedy.

Solar Ash is a contemplative experience, visual feast, and faced-paced thrill ride expertly wrapped up into one exhilarating adventure. Without a doubt, this game is one of the best indie games of 2021, if not the best.

Solar Ash had me racing across its cloud-covered playgrounds in the early hours, searching for the next fun platforming segment. By the remaining hours, I was running to see the conclusion of its gripping narrative. Solar Ash oozes as much substance as it does style, making for a wholly entertaining space romp.

Solar Ash is a spectacular achievement and a worthy successor to Heart Machine’s previous release. The fast and fluid movement makes exploration a delightful dance through the absurd. Although the structure is a little repetitive, the moment-to-moment gameplay is thrilling. Large and intense boss battles are the highlight of the game, creating jaw-dropping sequences that will leave you yearning for more.

Controlling Rei in Solar Ash’s beautiful world is an absolute joy, with fluid, precise, and simple controls as well as a diverse set of challenges to overcome. Unfortunately, there are more than a few moments where the normally excellent level design suddenly becomes tedious and annoying.

Solar Ash has the audiovisual stile of Hyper Light Drifter, the fights against titans of Shadow of the Colossus, the traversal mechanics of Jet Set Radio and the level design of Super Mario Galaxy. Do we really need to say anything else?

Anybody who likes fast-paced platformers with a gorgeous sense of style will enjoy Solar Ash. Who knows – maybe fans of a certain blue hedgehog can play a good 3D game for once.

Solar Ash excels when it captures that dream-like feeling of gliding across cosmic, surreal spaces. There are moments when the speed of Rei’s skates across the back of a terrifying monster will exhilarate, reminding players why they love games. But as a platformer, Solar Ash can be tedious, repetitive, and a bit clumsy. While these issues may clash with the lovingly crafted world and gravity-defying puzzles, they never truly harm what is ultimately a uniquely engaging game.

Where Solar Ash goes from an intriguing ambient platformer to one of the year’s most fascinating releases is in its fixation on living as an act of being stuck.

While I would have liked a bit more variety, what Solar Ash gives is a beautiful, vivid, technological adventure that drips with style. Its fluid traversal, combat and puzzle-like sections are a joy to navigate, as are its hulking bosses. Solar Ash is like nothing else on the market at the moment and that alone is enough for me to recommend it. What more could you want than a stunning, fluid, unique game? Not much, I reckon.

Even with some small flaws, Solar Ash manages to offer a beautiful adventure, with solid gameplay and unforgettable moments.

Rich in a singular aura and delicious journeys, Solar Ash is home to a universe that must be patiently tamed to be fully appreciated; between the so comfortable walks there are some great difficulties to overcome. From top to bottom, the cosmic and complex regions built by Heart Machine make one want to be fully excavated. Too bad that each new panorama discovered shelters objectives which often fail to disorient us.

A brilliant game, strengthened by an amazing art direction and great design that makes progression natural. It's definitely not perfect, some of its design solutions aren't as elegant and perfectly integrated as others, and its narrative falls flat most of the time, but in the end it's another great demonstration of Heart Machine's talent.

If you have a few hours to spend and want to play something that is unlike anything else this year, then Solar Ash is absolutely worth checking out. Anyone who is a fan of the action-adventure genre will no doubt enjoy this memorable experience.

There's a reason this space is so dreamily built--Solar Ash takes place inside a massive black hole, after all--but the game is at its best when it isn't treating those reasons as if they matter all that much. The late game leans a little too heavily into the story, including swapping out the strong boss battles in favor of a binary choice in the game's climactic moments. But, most of the time, that story is where it belongs: in the background. And, thankfully, Solar Ash has some gorgeous backgrounds.

Graceful movement and jaw-dropping fights against colossal monsters make Solar Ash a worthy follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter. [Recommended]

With a first run taking 10 hours or less, Solar Ash is a focused affair that delivers on its vision without getting distracted by extraneous missions or checklists. The scale of its massive creatures pairs well with strong level design and interesting characters. It’s hard to avoid comparisons, but bold visuals and a sense of agility help separate Solar Ash from its inspirations and provide a surreal journey that’s all its own.

Solar Ash is a highly original open-plan platform game. A slim move set that rewards momentum is the perfect means of exploring its swirling, broken landscapes and executing its more exacting challenges. While some of its elements feel overly simple, that doesn’t detract hugely from a clinically focused and fresh experience.

Solar Ash is a solid second effort from the talented people at Heart Machine Games, with an intoxicating sense of freedom, good boss fights and a gorgeous soundtrack. It's less polished and less deep than its predecessor, but it's worth your time and money.

Solar Ash does fast-paced platforming brilliantly and it features a super-exciting formula to boot. At the same time, that's really all it has going for it so with some much-needed additional variety, it could have been an even greater experience.

Solar Ash will excite the player thanks to its creative visuals and smooth movement but it soon gets too repetitive and loses its originality and challenge.

Solar Ash feels like a middle ground between something like Jet Set Radio and Shadow of the Colossus. Sadly, the new game by Heart Machine lacks any meaningful ambitions or novelty, and yet if you love the genre, Solar Ash is worth a try.

This beautiful, high-velocity leap into the unknown deserves points for style AND daring. [Issue#367, p.102]

Solar Ash is one of the most beautiful games of the year and plays incredibly fluid at times. Unfortunately, frustrating boss battles and erratic controls throw a spanner in the works, because this beautiful game world deserves to be explored and the platforming puzzles are fun to do.

If you are a fan of traversal-based games, or you just want a quick indie game to play through, I do not think you can go wrong with Solar Ash. The repetitive gameplay, poor PS5 optimization, and lack of replayability are definite downsides, but it is still a fun and intense game to play.

Solar Ash is repetitive and short, but that doesn't take away from how fun the core gameplay is. The developers have nailed Solar Ash's traversal system, making it genuinely fun to explore and complete the various platforming challenges. The art style is striking, the bosses are impressive, and while it may not have the same lasting impact Hyper Light Drifter did, Solar Ash is still worth checking out for fans of Heart Machine's work and the 3D platformer genre in general.

Solar Ash looks and feels awesome to play — when it works. When it doesn't, it's a frustrating experience.

Even with some rough edges, Heart Machine's latest is an endearing 3D platformer with its own unique hooks, carried by some strong lore, level design and aesthetics.

Although I didn’t care much for its story, Solar Ash still got its hooks in me. That sweet, speedy traversal is second to none; the almost-rhythmic pattern of gliding, jumping and grinding to get to those hard-to-reach areas and to take down gargantuan bosses is oh-so satisfying when you nail it. It misses a trick by not including any DualSense features, though – a bit of feedback as you move through the environment would take the game to the next level – but even without it, it’s a very nice world to get lost in indeed.

Solar Ash pushes for a sense of momentum and fluidity with its take on 3D platforming, and it does work very well indeed. Rei's controls and abilities give the game a sense of ease, making it feel very gratifying simply moving through the game's world. While the main quest doesn't really evolve the challenge, and the picturesque environments can feel somewhat empty, the traversal at the heart of everything does about enough to carry you through to a satisfying conclusion. It's an ambitious second effort from Heart Machine that mostly sticks the landing.

Solar Ash makes a good first impression with its silky-smooth controls, eye-catching visuals, and bombastic boss battles, but a lack of character progression or changes to core mechanics eventually drains some of the life from the game. Solar Ash is a solid action-platformer, but it doesn’t really rise above the many other indies occupying the same space, and ultimately, you may find your memories of the game disappearing rather swiftly into the void.

Solar Ash is a visually pleasing adventure that pulls you in quickly with its swift and elegant movement mechanics and a snazzy synth soundtrack. Despite the strong start, the experience begins to lose its grip the longer it goes, with unreliable performance and mundane combat.

Solar Ash hinges itself upon two core mechanics -- and almost nothing else. Skating around and dispelling corrupted masses of black goo is fun for a while, but when you've seen a game's whole hand in the first half-hour, it's a little hard to stay on board for the remainder.

I feel comfortable saying that Solar Ash is going to be someone's favorite game. It has a singular artistic vision and a strong enough message that, for the right person at the right time in their life, it's going to ring true in a way that will resonate with them, perhaps like no other work of art. It's also hard to deny the game's visual splendor. For me, it is a game that I wish I loved, but only liked, and I fear that will be the most common experience. There are a few too many flaws to overlook, and it's hard not to compare it to the masterpieces it hoped to emulate. That said, the video game world could do with more ambitious, imperfect works like Solar Ash and fewer safer bets. It may not be quite the masterwork that Hyper Light Drifter was, but it's still likely to stick with you after the credits roll.

There are certainly moments where Solar Ash excels, whether it’s by offering an environmental puzzle to crack or a first peek at some jaw-dropping scenery which is also, thankfully, fully traversable. It’s visually brilliant in so many ways, with twirled geometry to scale and slide upon, all of which is very consistent with the themes of its main questline. Furthermore, the present PlayStation 5 version manages these sights with aplomb, all quick load times and barely a stutter to be found. In its lesser moments, it comes off as a singular presentation looking for a more involved game underneath, better combat and better bosses which could more effectively serve these assets. It still remains a worthwhile quest to see through to the end, but games like Solar Ash are frustrating in that they could have been so much more.

Solar Ash offers a collection of promising concepts that don’t quite hit realization. While undoubtedly a visually striking experience, Rei’s journey into the Ultravoid suffers due to a disengaging narrative and repetitious gameplay. Solar Ash’s attractive world struggles to provide the player with captivating experiences. Elements do occasionally come together, however, in the form of fun traversal, unsettling creature design, and dazzling vistas, ensuring that while Solar Ash isn’t quite the release it might have been, it successfully retains an unmistakable Heart Machine charm.

Solar Ash deserves props for its world design, the fluidity of movement when you're in the groove, and the sense of scale on display, so it's somewhat painful to be down on it to the degree I am. It's not far from being a bit special, the kind of indie gem that everyone has to play, but it's unfortunately just not quite there. There's still a great deal of fun to be had here, and your mileage with the mechanics might be better, but for me Solar Ash is so focused on delivering flow, it forgot that you don't want to go on the same walk every day.