If you played Hyper Light Drifter, you got your ass kicked by Hyper Light Drifter. Heart Machineās top-down action RPG was a bona fide gauntlet designed to run you through the wringer (a lot) before you acclimated to its resolutely unforgiving peculiarities. So you might be pleased to hear that the studioās sophomore effort, Solar Ash, a 3D platformer planned for the fall, wonāt be quite so punishing.
āItās more about the feeling and the spectacle and less about the challenge this time around,ā Alx Preston, Solar Ashās creative director, told Kotaku over a Zoom call last week. āWe are leaning a little more toward leniency, ultimately.ā
You might recognize Solar Ash, seeing as it has been paraded around the PR block a bit. In 2019, the game even sported a different name, initially announced as Solar Ash Kingdom. But as the iterative development process continued, Heart Machine dropped the āKingdomā to better reflect the gameās current state, something Preston described as ānot a light decision.ā Trailers, interviews, marketing materials, and even registered web pages from the time indicate a commitment to Solar Ash Kingdom as the final name.
The game popped up againāas simply Solar Ash this timeāat the June 2020 PlayStation 5 reveal livestream and again during Sonyās February 2021 games showcase. Then, last week, it showed at Annapurna Interactiveās first dedicated event with a splashy trailer and a release date: October 26, 2021. Itāll come out on PS4, PS5, and PC.
Every peek at Solar Ash to date has flaunted the same confident aesthetic: a melancholic, meditative sci-fi world with dreamy neons and bright pastels, all set to soul-shaking downtempo synths. Itās set inside a black hole. You play as Rei, a so-called voidrunner tasked with the goal of saving her planet from near-certain destruction. Gameplay snippets so far have shown typical third-person platforming moves, like jumping, double-jumping, dashing, and climbing.
Mechanically, itās a marked departure from the frenetic hack-and-slash that defined Heart Machineās previous game. But thereās a visual throughline thatās led some observers to believe itās, if not quite a sequel to Hyper Light Drifter, at least set in the same fictional universe. Prestonās own remarks even fueled that speculation. He tweeted as much in 2019:
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1105945043498487808
Today, things have, uh, changed.
āThe universe as in literally the sameāit could be several galaxies away. So, in that sense, yes. But in the, like, MCU, Metaverse-style? Itās not in the same next-door, neighbor planet or anything like that,ā Preston told Kotaku. āThe thing that I will say is that itās got connective tissue between Hyper Light because, hey, Iām the person thatās leading the charge on the project creatively and design-wise.ā
So, there you have it: not a sequel. Barely even related. But fans of Hyper Light Drifterās baked-in relentlessness should still find something to like. Though Solar Ash will indeed be more accessible, itāll still pose somewhat of a challenge. Itās just a different type of challenge.
Much of the shift is necessitated by design. Solar Ash, after all, is a high-velocity 3D platformer. That means having deft control over cameras, gauging depth perception of jumps, maintaining situational awareness as vivid vistas whiz by at blistering speed, and so on. Some spots in the game have āweird gravity,ā per Preston. And, of course, there are those massive creatures you may have seen in the trailers: a floating centipede encased in stone, an arachnid with five seriously unsettling eyes.
āI donāt think itās going to be an easy game. We still ask a lot of the player,ā Preston assured Kotaku. ā[But] weāre leaning more towards a little more accessible, for sure. Just because we are. We are.ā
Correction, 8/4/2021, 7:00 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this article misstated the gameās release date.
