Video games are not always recognized for the emotional effect they can foster in the player. Whether you’re talking about the powerful, final scenes of The Last of Us or the sheer whimsy of an alien singing Rodgers and Hammerstein, video games have a unique position in the media industry to bring out emotion in the player.

And that’s just what Heart Machine’s latest game, Solar Ash, attempts to do. Solar Ash is a game about loss and the lengths people will go to in order to avoid it, setting its heavy themes against a bold, science-fiction backdrop. It’s a remarkable game that doesn’t always live up to its potential, but, when it works, Solar Ash positively sings.

Story

The game begins with the main character, Rei, riding an asteroid into the swirling center of a large black hole. She crash-lands on a landmass within the black hole and begins to look for her mission objective while trying to get in contact with the rest of her crew.

Rei is a phenomenal character, full of charm and wit and a deep emotional well that is brought to life with skill by her voice actress, Fryda Wolff. Rei is the player’s vehicle through the journey that is Solar Ash, but she is anything but a silent protagonist. Her characterization and gradual development over the course of the game are some of Solar Ash’s best elements.

The narrative itself is a wild one, though it also happens to be one of the most enjoyable I experienced all year. Rei and her team of Voidrunners are on a mission to prevent the Ultravoid from destroying their home planet, killing the millions of people unable to evacuate. But something’s gone wrong with the device that was meant to stop the Ultravoid, and now Rei’s crew is missing as well.

Solar Ash does a remarkable job at slowly allowing the player to piece together the true nature of the Ultravoid and Rei’s mission. Rei is aided in her journey by a wonderful, AI companion named CYD, whose fractured memory is key to getting the Voidrunner’s objective back on track.

CYD will slowly begin regaining her memory as Rei progresses, and with each new node, she’ll offer another piece of the puzzle that is Solar Ash’s story. Voidrunner caches left behind by members of Rei’s team also offer glimpses into how each of the other Voidrunners coped with being stranded in the Ultravoid.

There are also three different side quests that center on a specific character and their plight after being stuck within the Ultravoid. Each of these quests deals with loss or grief or denial in a certain way, and in the end, each of the characters is changed by their encounter with Rei.

While the story can lull at times as a result of some of the game’s more repetitive qualities, Solar Ash nevertheless manages to stick the landing with style. There are two possible endings for the game, though one is clearly a true ending, and serve both the game’s themes and story beautifully. The true ending is especially deep as it caps off one of the game’s enduring mysteries in a satisfying fashion.

Gameplay

Heart Machine took an interesting approach to movement for Solar Ash that allowed them to create a remarkable world for Rei to explore. Rei moves by skating across the environment, an effect brought about by the Voidtech in her suit and boots. She can skate across just about any surface, including the cloud-like terrain that makes up the majority of the Ultravoid.

This type of movement can be fun during platforming sequences that require speed and accuracy, but it tends to be a little underwhelming when just traveling from one point to another. It lacks a certain tactile quality that felt very satisfying in a game like The Pathless.

There’s also a grappling feature that allows Rei to quickly shoot over to specific points in the environment, but it’s another feature that works well in certain instances and falls a little flat in others. The grapple can also be used offensively to close the distance between Rei and an enemy, but its range is so short that Rei often has to already be within striking range for the grapple to even work.

That said, there are plenty of small moments where Solar Ash puts its platforming money where its platforming mouth is. Rei will often have to scale tall buildings or leap across large gaps with an assist from a string of mid-air grapple points. One particularly exciting moment requires players to use the grapple shot to sling Rei around the side of a suspended piece of masonry, only to catch another grapple point on the other side to reach solid ground.

It’s clear that Heart Machine funneled most of their development into Rei’s movement kit, as her combat capabilities leave something to be desired. Like Rei’s skating, her attacks feel neither good nor bad in use; they’re just kind of there. She only has one attack type, and it has the same effectiveness against every enemy type.

Additionally, defeating enemies serves little purpose other than to remove the threat of them attacking while Rei tries to do something else. They don’t drop resources or award experience, and oftentimes they’re so easy to eliminate that fighting them just feels like an obstacle rather than a fun part of the game.

The gameplay overall is never offensive or even all that bad. The biggest thing it has going against it is that it looks more exciting than it feels. There’s something missing in the moment-to-moment sensation of gliding across the clouds or leaping from platform to platform that games like The Pathless and Marvel’s Spider-Man absolutely nailed.

Audio and Visual

Solar Ash has, without a doubt, the most visually interesting world of any game this year. The Ultravoid is a wonder, filled with some of the most distinct and novel environments I’ve seen in any video game ever. It contains a dilapidated metropolis, a haunted fungi garden, a crumbling republic filled with poisonous lakes, and a lava-filled mountain that even has a dragon as its boss.

The Eternal Garden and the Luminous Peak are the two regions that stand out the most, sporting unique color palettes that immediately set them apart from the rest of the world. It’s striking just how much Heart Machine managed to fit into the game and for it to all still feel like one place.

Not only is the world well-designed, but it also looks fantastic as well. The colors and textures are all rendered beautifully, creating a balance between solid surfaces and the cloud layer that all the landmasses rest on. It’s the perfect game for some creative digital photography, and it’s a crime that it doesn’t have a dedicated photo mode.

The world is brought to life even more by the voice actors who got to play in it, and they each pull off a remarkable job of breathing life into their characters and the environment they inhabit. Fryda Wolff is the voice of Rei, and she turns in what I would consider to be a career-defining performance with this game.

Wolff incorporates these subtle inflections to her delivery of Rei’s lines that establish her personality and views on life. She also recorded several lines of Rei shouting and laughing with delight as she makes her way around the world, and these noises are a charming bit of character building that endeared Rei to me even more.

The other standout performance in the game comes from CYD, Rei’s AI companion, who fluctuates effortlessly between a ditzy robot who can’t remember anything crucial to a kindly confidant who only wants what’s best for Rei. Their growing friendship and comradery were some of the most refreshing parts of Solar Ash, and I was genuinely sad to leave them behind after finishing the game.

What Could Be Better

Adding some level of depth to Rei’s skating and movement would go a long way toward making the game-feel of Solar Ash more enjoyable. It’s hard to describe, but incorporating Dual Sense functionality could be a good place to start. I find it a bit odd that a PlayStation console exclusive didn’t take advantage of any of the Dual Sense controller’s unique features.

Extending the grappling ability’s range would also alleviate some of the frustration I had with specific encounters designed around the grapple shot. I missed more than a few tricky jumps because of it, and that relentless sense of failure sapped some of the fun out of the game.

I’d also like to see deeper combat options and customization. Different weapon types and upgrades for Rei’s suit other than health increases would make fighting enemies a bit more interesting, not to mention I would finally have somewhere to spend the thousands of extra plasma I have stored up.

Verdict

Solar Ash is a remarkable sophomore outing for Heart Machine and a game that they should be immensely proud of. Its story strikes all the right chords with its lovable cast of flawed, deeply human characters, even if it didn’t always make the most of its gameplay features. In the end, Solar Ash is a triumphant, beautiful game that handles its heavy themes with incredible care.