Held off on this one for a while despite absolutely adoring the directors last game Hyper Light Drifter, but what comes with this graphical leap forward is met with a mechanical and conceptual step back.

Solar Ash released to somewhat mixed reception but got consistent credit and praise for it's bosses, and although they can sometimes offer a breathtaking spectacle, a spectacle is all they are; I'd struggle to call any of them truly great. The bosses, and the game as a whole really, all suffer from repetitive connect the dots combat. You'll be playing as Rei, the galaxy's most aggressive acupuncture specialist, and the brunt of the gameplay revolves around finding red weakspots across huge masses of black goo. If you think this sounds boring, well... too bad! That's the game!

Skating across the sunken clouds of a pastel coloured, shattered world can sometimes feel a touch euphoric but again it needed to be backed up with more compelling gameplay and exploration that's rewarded with more than just currency and the odd, equally uninteresting text file. There was potential here but Solar Ash feels destined to be forgotten, with no hope of joining the high ranks of indie game masterclasses along with Hyper Light Drifter. Solar Ash feels more like an experiment of aesthetics and movement, hopefully for something greater down the line. Maybe Hyper Light Breaker will impress more.

It's a shame this released a year after 2020's Haven too, its had the same cloud skating traversal but paired with a much more compelling plot, nuanced characters, and a whirlwind romance that felt absorbing. The soundtrack too, much better. Speaking of Solar Ash's OST, man... it's no Disasterpeace that's for sure! Throw on your favourite Tangerine Dream album for some more appropriate otherworldly ambient synth because what you get in the game feels bland and sterile.

Don't let the score fool you though, a 6/10 is still a 'good' in my books. No matter if it's tilting towards mediocrity. If you've seen gameplay and thought "that looks cool" like I did then hey, give it a shot!

I have never felt so much like a game was "made for me". Solar Ash is a fusion between so many games that are close to my heart: Outer Wilds, Shadow of the Colossus, Jet Set Radio... And yet it creates its own feel.

The world - if you can call it that, its more of an amalgamation of worlds - is so unique. Different planets collided into a void, mashed together, shattered, scattered, with only a handful of confused survivors trying to come to terms with their shared tragedy of losing absolutely everything. The wealth of quality voice acting and info logs hidden throughout the game develops such a strong narrative that I felt determined as Rei to prevent the trauma I walked into in each new area.

And YES! This game creates actually interesting, unique environments for each area. While I'd say the final area (volcanic) was the least interesting, many of the others will stand out in my memory for a long time. The desertified crab world was fantastic, and while the metaphors for climate change were occasionally too heavy-handed for my liking, I still love the game's realistic approach of people not caring until it's too late.

And the controls are so satisfying! And the exploration is awesome! There was never a situation where I felt like I was being walled-off (other than the literal walls at the edges of most zones, but eh, they weren't blocking off anything). I'm still convinced I can climb to some clifftops if I maneuver around just right, and often I'd find my way up somewhere that felt so natural and yet led to a little surprise - Super Mario Odyssey style - the developer saying "hey, nice job!", and that's all it needed to make it worth it.

There's a lot more I could say about this game - it's flawlessly smooth controls that make it simply FUN to skate over the weird, fluffy geometries, the effective simplicity of the health/damage system, the story hiding clues towards the truth as you approach it (and yet it was resolved in a surprising, beautiful way that left me even more curious), it's all so so good.

I wasn't ready to leave the world by the time it was over. But that's a rare, beautiful thing.

- Tarragon Danderpaws

Analise em video no canal :

https://youtu.be/eAMZDG1r8ys

Bom, guys, recentemente joguei, zerei e até mesmo pratiquei o recém-chegado ao Game Pass, Solar Ash, um joguinho um tanto quanto diferente que a gente vai conversar e analisar hoje.

Bom, já começando, falando um pouco da nossa história no game, onde nele existe um ser chamado Ultravoid, um buraco negro gigantesco que está devorando tudo pelo caminho na galáxia. Pra tentar dar um jeito nisso, no game, criaram o Starseed, um dispositivo poderoso que promete destruir esse buraco negro. Só que, pra ativar, no game, a gente tem que entrar numa missão super perigosa.

Assim, é montado um time de especialistas chamados de voidrunners, cada um com suas habilidades únicas. Tava tudo indo bem, até que perderam o contato com o grupo. A última esperança agora é a Rei, a destemida voidrunner que decide encarar o Ultravoid pra salvar a galáxia e, no processo, descobrir o que rolou com os parceiros.

Com a Rei no comando, a gente deve explorar o Ultravoid com a ajuda de uma IA dos voidrunners para assim ativar a energia do starseed. Para isso, a gente tem, no game, uma espécie de puzzle que, na minha opinião, é muito diferente se tratando não somente de puzzle em si, como também um teste de velocidade, agilidade e precisão. Existem diversos desafios desse tipo ao longo do jogo e que a gente vai falar um pouco da gameplay agora.

Como dito anteriormente, o que mais me intrigou em Solar Ash foi essa questão do puzzle e da agilidade. Não somente a agilidade da jogabilidade relacionada ao combate, como também na questão da movimentação, onde basicamente a gente no jogo vai sair patinando por aí, literalmente. É muito divertido sair por aí, deslizar, saltar enquanto desliza e, ao mesmo tempo, derrotar inimigos com as mecânicas únicas desse jogo.

A exploração presente no game, com certeza, é sem dúvida uma das coisas mais divertidas que tem no game. Basicamente, os objetivos que você tem para fazer vão ficar marcados no mapa quando você utiliza uma espécie de pulso que funciona como um radar para rastrear seus objetivos naquela área. Isso me intrigou nesse game porque, geralmente, quando a gente tem recursos desse tipo em qualquer jogo, isso tende a facilitar o game em questão. Porém, aqui em Solar Ash, isso funciona de maneira diferente. Afinal, o game te dá o seu objetivo, mas a rota que você vai pegar pra esse caminho fica meio que a critério seu, sendo raramente óbvias, digamos assim.

E quando você está indo ao caminho dos seus objetivos, o cenário do game também se torna um grande destaque. Principalmente pra mim, foi um grande destaque porque, nota-se que são cenários relativamente simples, porém ele é cheio de elementos que vão enriquecer a nossa gameplay, seja pelos seus multicaminhos que você pode seguir para chegar ao seu objetivo ou até mesmo falando das atividades extras espalhadas pelo mapa. Cada área possui seu próprio conceito. Não somente pelo conceito visual em si, mas também falando aí do conceito de gameplay e mecânica únicos que cada cenário vai ter.

Uma coisa que eu achei um ponto negativo nessa parte de cenário e gameplay, que pode ser relativo, e que muita gente pode achar isso um desafio e não se incomodar... Porém, para minha pessoa, achei sem necessidade, que é o fator morte no game. Por ser um game que é frenético em sua gameplay e nos seus puzzles, é muito comum que você, sim, naturalmente morra nesses processos. E quando isso acontece, basicamente você tem que começar literalmente tudo de novo. Tente se por numa situação como se fosse um Guitar Hero, por exemplo, onde se você errar uma nota da sequência de música, você tem que voltar tudo do início sempre... Basicamente, é nesse sentido que acontece no game. Isso não somente acontece com o combate propriamente dito, como também acontece com os saltos e os trechos de plataformas no geral. Nesse caso, até existem certos checkpoints que vão salvar sua localização se caso você cai, porém, eles são bem distantes um do outro, o que por sua vez muitas vezes acaba irritando você.

E falando desse ponto negativo, a gente vai falar agora de um dos pontos que eu sinceramente acho incrível e que para mim é a cereja do bolo, mas em contraparte é um pouco que é muito afetado por essa questão citada anteriormente, que são os chefes.

Quando a gente fala das batalhas de chefes, eles são monstros geralmente gigantescos e todas as batalhas geralmente têm um tom bem cinematográfico e épico, seja pelo combate grande maioria das vezes grandioso ou até mesmo pela trilha incrível e toda a construção visual presente ali nesses momentos. Nesses momentos, entram a questão dos puzzles de agilidades onde vocês devem acertar certos pontos presentes no corpo do chefe em sequência, patinando no corpo do chefe, pulando e etc. Tudo nesses momentos é simplesmente incrível, a não ser, claro, pelo nosso ponto negativo citado anteriormente.

Afinal, trechos como esses são, digamos, difíceis até você pegar o ritmo certo e finalmente terminar a luta do chefe. Começando pelo ponto básico que é a distância dos pontos um do outro com isso é erro praticamente inevitável dos saltos, que, como dito anteriormente, se você errar, volta tudo do início. Outro ponto que não ajuda é o fato de que nesses momentos há diversas mudanças de câmera de maneira brusca, o que acabam confundindo você e, por sua vez, fazendo com que vocês caiam e comece tudo de novo... Obviamente que isso no início até que é tranquilo, porém ao longo do jogo, obviamente e naturalmente, os chefes vão se tornar maiores e, consequentemente, os pontos e objetivos que você tem que fazer, por sua vez, também acabam se tornando maiores, o que por sua vez também o ponto negativo citado anteriormente passam a ser uma dor de cabeça muito maior. Porém, falando num contexto geral, tirando claro o ponto negativo, essa parte das lutas tanto dos chefes quanto o combate puro mesmo são bem legais.

É interessante notar também que Solar Ash tem uma ambientação, tem uma parte gráfica relativamente simples, porém muito bem construído. Em diversos momentos você vai se pegar encantado pelas suas ambientações, pelas suas construções, pelo cenário em si que, apesar de simplório, ele tem um tom que combina muito bem com o jogo, principalmente quando a gente fala da paleta de cores do game que puxa pra um lado verde e rosa que dá um tom legal à identidade visual do game.

Já as trilhas e parte sonora geral do game, ela é bem tímida e minimalista, porém, na minha opinião, cumpre bem a proposta do game.

No geral, Solar Ash é uma baita aventura. As batalhas do jeito que são no game, que é uma espécie de quick time event, são muito legais. Apesar de que eu não esperava me frustrar tanto nesse sentido. apesar disso, esse ponto torna o game bem único. Eu igualmente adorei a exploração presente no game. Porém, a execução de todos esses conjuntos que eu mencionei que eu acho que são positivos, isso obviamente falando de todos os pontos presentes no game, eu acho que essa execução deixou um pouco a desejar pra mim. Principalmente porque o jogo ele não tem um desafio propriamente dito, basicamente tudo se torna uma tentativa e erro no game, o que por sua vez pode tornar ele um pouco enjoado e até mesmo repetitivo. Mas no geral, Solar Ash é sim um bom game, ainda mais disponível no Game Pass agora. Vale sim você pegar e testar ele.

Pontos Positivos:

- Mecânicas de jogo legais
- Exploração e Cenários
- Batalhas contra chefes
- Ambientação

Pontos negativos:

- Puzzles e situações repetitivas
- Câmera problemática
- Momentos de tentativa e

i was genuinely sad when there was no more game left to play. i finished and immediately went back just to tool around because moving around in this game is SO FUN. i would finish challenges and say, out loud, "that was fun", like a simp.

part of it is that it's super legible. you aren't left guessing what you're supposed to do, moving fast is clearly the best option and poking around the shrubbery is obviously pointless. jump points and grind rails are always clear, and the hardest thing is occasionally finding a grapple point with your eyes while you're speeding along (and, ok, fine the boss fights can be a bit... finnicky) (however the difficulty settings are beautiful and reasonable and perfect in that i was able to finish this game without feeling too stressed, but sufficiently challenged)

another part is that the level design is super cool. it takes medium advantage of its setting with a fair number of "impossible" vertical rises and perspective/gravity shifts, but mostly: the colors! the glorious colors!

i actually found the writing super overwrought and while I liked the voice actress I ended up turning the voices off because it just kept tripping over itself. way too invested in its own lore when i would have preferred a Souls-ian lack of exposition. however thats such a minor criticism when its just such a joy to move in this game.

Having restarted my journey with this game recently on Hard Mode, it kills me to see this game not get the love I really think it deserves. The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at, and most importantly it is incredibly fun to play. Navigating through these environments as fast and stylishly as your character does it is always satisfying and rewarding. The movement mechanics are the heart of the experience with this game and it never gets dull. Every environment in this game is like a beautiful surrealist painting, and generally the art direction is a masterclass throughout.

For a game explicitly about the impending doom of your planet, the game offers a surprising amount of levity in world and character design that does not interfere with the story this game is trying to tell. The team at Heart Machine are top of their class in emotional story telling, and Solar Ash is no exception. The swelling music as you make your final runs at a boss will always stick in my head when thinking about this game; it's practically magical. By the time you come to the end of your journey in the Ultravoid, the game offers a deep meaningful take away message that I wasn't expecting but absolutely appreciated. What feels particularly great about playing a Heart Machine story is that the themes and story beats, while they may take place in far off alien places, feel incredibly personal to the developers and insanely human. The game is not perfect by any means and could certainly tighten up a few aspect relating to smaller enemy encounters and rewards given by exploring the environment. All that being said, this game is the first 3D title the studio has put out and in light of all the things the team absolutely nailed with this game, it should be far more celebrated and appreciated. It may not be as tightly designed as Hyper Light Drifter, but it is absolutely a majorly positive contribution to Heart Machines catalogue that I'll easily recommend to anybody looking for a stylish movement platformer.

This is definitely carried by an innate pleasure derived from the movement in this game and the stellar audio-visual experience, offering beautiful set pieces and surprisingly varied environments to skate through. What drags this game down though is first, an extremely shallow mechanical depth, offering the same experience throughout the game from the first minute. There are aspects of mastery, but not to a degree that reached a meaningful enhancement of the experience. I wish they leaned into the momentum of the movement way more heavily, allowing for emergent gameplay to happen where it already naturally feels like it could be there, just bubbling under the surface. The main collectibles in this are one of the weirdest systems I have ever seen in a game. It is a generic red substance in form of blobs or crystals found all over the place. It has one use: To upgrade your health bar. The problem: You can easily upgrade your health bar to the maximum before even fighting the first boss, after which you will lose one health upgrade, which you can just as easily rebuy again without any meaningful engagement or choice happening in the process. Either go all in: Remove all health upgrades at a boss and make it really useful to have them for the fights creating a decision for the player or just offer any kind of alternative, be it cosmetics. The current system adds to the overall feeling of the gameplay and systems not fully supporting the vision of the visuals, sound and story. I still immensely enjoyed my experience with Solar Ash, though and loved finding all the secret stashes and just being in this world.

Esto se ve absolutamente precioso. No puedo esperar a jugarlo.

Lo juega

Podemos echar de menos un lugar que ya no existe, y también a aquellos que ya no están, pero la vida sigue. Podemos conectar con otros, encontrar un hogar. Siempre tenemos la oportunidad de aceptar el dolor, la oportunidad de empezar algo nuevo.

It's fine, I guess.

But you're better off just playing Hyper Light Drifter.

Or replaying Hyper Light Drifter.

the movement mechanics are impeccable, that's for sure, sliding, jumping and flying around is super fun, relaxing and fluid, and this is also due to the immaculate level design that is also present, wonderful

speaking of the gameplay, the bosses are extremely inspired by shadow of the colossus, one of my favorite games, and it even manages to transform its main mechanics into something specific to the game that blends in with the rest while being fun.

the game is also visually excellent, with unique and vivid boss and character designs

but the praise stops there

the story is mediocre at best, being ridiculously poorly told with slow and pointless dialogues, not to mention being very obvious, bland and conveying the message of mourning in a terrible way. this also includes the stories of the npcs, but they manage to be much better than the main one (even if they connect very poorly with the latter)

the main character is an insufferable, dumb pain in the ass, who only becomes a decent person in the good ending, which is the only possible ending for the game, since the bad one is extremely counter-intuitive and poorly done

the combat is simple and ok, but it's too easy and feels more like a hindrance to the game than something to add to the experience

and the soundtrack is decent at best, unremarkable and completely agreeable

it's a game that you'll have a lot of fun playing and you'll be fine relaxing, but it has obvious flaws.

The closest we'll get to another Shadow the Hedgehog game, Solar Ash is a 3D platformer where you travel across a... black hole I think? defeating creatures in an attempt to save your home. Let's start off with the positives. This game is really pretty. It has a very colorful and unique aesthetic with enough variety in its locales to keep things interesting. This concludes the things I liked about this game. That's not entirely fair, because I nearly like many aspects of this game, but they all ended up falling flat for me. The movement starts off enjoyable, but I found the platforming puzzles very tedious and imprecise. The story concept is interesting, but it isn't very deep and hard to follow. The combat seems quick and fast paced, but has annoying enemy designs and a bizarre health system. Across the board this is a game that I should've really enjoyed but I ended up forcing myself to finish. I'm sure there are some people out there who really enjoy this game, but it's certainly not for me.

no game this pretty should have to suffer from writing THIS bad. i don't like to be too hyperbolic, i love video games and i just wanna be chill about em, but Solar Ash has some of the most aggravating writing i've experienced in a game. the core appeal here, to me, is getting to effortlessly glide around gorgeous landscapes and soak in the atmosphere - but your protagonist NEVER shuts the fuck up!!!! you'll see a glowing red eye on a goop obstacle and she'll blurt out "that must be its weak point! i should attack it!". the game constantly patronizes the player with obnoxious hand-holding quips, the tone of which never really matches the world's. there's an area with hazardous green acid that causes a vignette and a warning indicator to appear on screen - obviously, that isn't obvious enough of an indicator of danger so she says "Even the water here is hazardous, because... of course it is."

Hyper Light Drifter managed to have an interesting world without any dialogue. it's strange to see how much of an emphasis this game places on story, with a fair amount of sidequest NPCs and text logs that no human being has ever read. a lot of its meat ends up being exposition and a stream of meaningless sci-fi proper nouns. the back end of its narrative has that YA-fiction blatant stating of themes in an attempt to be about 'something.' the final boss is the manifestation of the protagonists' self-hatred and guilt that gets defeated by reaching out to others, i couldn't help but groan.

part of me thinks this game's focus on story is more a reflection of how empty the rest of it is. a lot of its systems seem entirely superfluous - health points never matter (why can you even take damage?), the only thing you can spend currency on is on getting more health, you can collect more suits but they have a negligible effect on gameplay. there's a lot of time spent on boss fights but all of them play the exact same way - you home in on a bit, glide around hitting little needle things, and then home in on their eye. it's fun the first couple of times but gets repetitive. for a roughly 5-6 hour game, a lot of it feels like filler. it never stops looking gorgeous, it never stops being fun to skate around in its world (tho i disagree with how its momentum is so easy to lose & never really builds in a tactile sense), but i wish it was designed tighter. and that whoever wrote it is never allowed to communicate in any language ever again.

A truly interesting and unexpected follow up to Hyper Light Drifter that has glimmers of being just as special, if only it didn't manage to get in its own way. This comes through narratively and mechanically, where seemingly every written word further drains the mystique inherent in the stunningly rendered pastel cloudscape Heart Machine have assembled; one that feels so wonderfully smooth to glide through, soaring over its clouds, grinding rails across its aerial landscapes... until it suddenly doesn't, and your momentum breaks at the most jarring of times. Ambitious game for sure, and you can feel that shine through in its best moments, but as a package it falls just short of cohering into something more.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Solar Ash. The movement was incredibly fun and satisfying; the story and fantastical sci-fi setting is very much up my alley. I personally don't have much to say, the game just clicked with me. It is by no means a masterpiece; the health system is basically worthless and camera has issues when gravity gets funky. Even then, I found myself engrossed and having a great time for its entire runtime. Solar Ash is definitely worth checking out, although the asking price of $40 USD may be a bit steep.

The "finish in 3 hours" achievement seemed possible, and the difficulty seemed interesting enough that I cranked it up. It totally transformed in my hands from a, fine, fairly mid exploratory platformer to a racing game. Suddenly those weird anomalies I limped my way through were tight puzzle to find the fastest route. The bosses became intense race courses whose tracks slowly dissolved. I threw myself into it with my whole voidussy and fell short by 5 minutes. So i did it again, and got the achievement :)

I think it's fascinating how the difficulty totally changed the game for me. Monsters weren't things to hunt down, but damage soaks only eliminated when you had time to spare. Shortcuts launch you across sections of the map as you race from anomaly to anomaly. Your health when you spend time exploring is easily supplemented by the troves of treasure in the nooks and crannies. But when you're on a time crunch, your health is suddenly limited by the genius decision to have each boss permanently slice away a bar, and you are forced to reckon with 1-2 slivers - which is fine! you shouldn't be taking hits anyway, and if you are, monster resets shouldn't be bothering you because killing them is a waste of time!

So this becomes one of the few games where I said "actually let's turn up the difficulty" as well as one of the games where I sat down and started a new game as soon as I finished the last. A memorable gem for me. (Still way too much dialogue, though, especially if you're trying to speed through!)