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Solar ash review4/24/2023 No matter their shortcomings, the Massive Anomalies do a great job of making you feel small and an even better job at making you feel big, once you’ve brought them down. Weird angles jumping from different body parts can be a big source of frustration here. Some of these fights can have moments that are just as frustrating as the regular puzzles. Each attempt grows more difficult with spread out weak points, less time to complete, and less safe surfaces to skate on. Rei hops around the backs of these beasts hitting weak points under a certain amount of time, all leading up to a final weak point that deals damage. These fights play out similarly to the puzzles that preceded them. They vary from a giant air serpent to a giant sword wielding warrior. ![]() Once all Anomalies in an area are destroyed, you kick off the boss fight with the area’s Massive Anomaly. This particular Anomaly, spread through an entire island, has you jump from one platform to another covered in goo, a jump that ended with me back on the ground floor many times and which forced me to restart the puzzle. One specific one comes in the late hours of the game. That said, even with the know-how, some puzzles can still come off as frustrating. There are no power-ups (aside from health upgrades you can buy and some new suits you can unlock.) These puzzles will require you to skate, climb, avoid enemies, and explore your surroundings to solve them. From the start screen, you have everything you need to complete every puzzle Solar Ash has to offer. Failing to hit a marker results in the Anomaly dealing out some damage and resetting. Each marker must be hit in a certain order under a certain amount of time. These moments serve as puzzles that will test your skills. ![]() You destroy these Anomalies by hitting their weak points, indicated by a marker. These hard to miss blobs are called Anomaly and you are tasked with destroying them to rile up an area’s enormous bosses. Skating around you’ll start to notice collections of black goo in each area. ![]() The game is good about making you walk through important narrative moments and encounters in the environment, which makes me wonder why skating wasn’t just the default movement instead of requiring players to hold the left trigger to keep it activated. Even in moments when skating wasn’t necessary, I found myself skating anyway. She gets a quick boost with the right trigger. Rei has the ability to skate across surfaces by holding the left trigger. Speaking of moving forward (I’m sorry), the main gameplay focus of Solar Ash is mobility and being able to traverse the world as fast as possible. They bring some life to the void and play on the game’s themes of community, isolation, and moving forward. They are fighting to hold on to some kind of normalcy in an impossible situation. Survivors you discover on your adventure, like a lone warship captain looking for his crew or a member of the clergy looking for his elders, all share a sad reality. The laws of gravity have no say in this mysterious place. Each area feels unique and plays with the expectations we come to expect from a “Swamp” or “Lava” area. The Crater area is engulfed in cotton candy clouds, surrounded by jagged purple cliffs, with your doomed home planet looming overhead. Each of the six main biomes are breathtaking and heartbreaking all at once. Upon entering the Ultravoid, you are assaulted by the colorful worlds that have already fallen victim to the mass. To do this, Rei enters the void to activate the Starseed, a giant sword-shaped beacon that has the power to close the black hole. Players take control of Rei, a Voidrunner trying to save her planet from the approaching black hole, known as the Ultravoid. Solar Ash is no exception to that rule but look past the few scabs and scratches and you’ll see a game cruising by comfortably, with its eyes closed. ![]() You can’t learn to skate without scraping a few knees. In less capable hands, it’s a genre shift that would leave players scratching their heads, but Hart Machine makes it work. Developer Heart Machine follow-up their freshman outing, 2016’s popular 2D dungeon crawler, Hyper Light Drifter, with a fast-paced, in-line skating puzzle platformer set in the same universe. It’s a game that no matter how mad it makes you, you’re bound to forgive it, partially because you’re intrigued by it, but mostly because it’s so nice to look at. Solar Ash is a game about fucking up and trying to learn from your mistakes in spite of the ensuing frustration.
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