Solar Ash

Solar Ash is an action-adventure from Heart Machine, the studio behind the acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter, this time moving from pixel art into vast three-dimensional worlds. The player takes on the role of Rei, a Voidrunner who ventures into a giant gravitational vortex called the Void to save her planet, which has been swallowed by this cosmic anomaly. Along the way she discovers the remnants of vanished civilizations, meets strange characters trapped between realities, and battles massive, geometric beings called Remnants.

At the core of the gameplay is fluid movement — the character glides on invisible skates across curved surfaces, performing trick jumps, dashes, and grinds, creating a sense of speed more reminiscent of a racing game or skateboarding than a classic platformer. Fights against giant bosses work on the principle of climbing across their body while in motion and destroying specific weak points, similar to Shadow of the Colossus, only in a much faster and more acrobatic form, where failing a jump means falling back to the start. Between combat sequences, the player explores floating islands, collects memories, and solves simple spatial puzzles that function more as a calmer breather between the more acrobatic and combat-heavy passages.

Visually, the game combines vivid neon colors with a dark, cosmic backdrop, and on PS5 it runs smoothly even in large open spaces, heightening the sense of fast movement and long glides. The electronic, atmospheric soundtrack beautifully underscores the game's meditative yet urgent mood. Solar Ash was received as an impressive, stylistically distinctive title that showed Heart Machine could carry its signature visual language into a larger, more open, and mechanically different game world, without sacrificing the feeling of agility and weightlessness that earned Hyper Light Drifter its reputation.

Why play it: For fans of fast, fluid movement and bold visual stylization who want to see how the makers of Hyper Light Drifter translated their signature language into a bigger, more open world.