Solar Ash
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Developer Heart Machine
Format PC, PS4, PS5 (tested)
Release Out now
The first thought that crosses our mind as the credits roll on Heart Machine’s ambitious action platformer: we can’t wait for the speed runs. That’s no surprise for a game that has, as the developer put it to us, “two buttons for go”. At its best, it feels like Jet Set Radio meets Shadow Of The Colossus for the AGDQ generation. It’s a game about moving fast and looking good while doing so – without letting the small matter of the end of the world get in the way. And in practised hands, for the most part, it manages to achieve both.
From its edges and surfaces to its colour palette, it’s a softer, looser game than less precise and only occasionally as demanding. Rei is a drifter in a very different sense, moving with an easy grace that belies the urgency of her mission. Her world may be on the verge of disappearing games – albeit with fewer of those wind-milling plunges – and a clean run of tricks and grinds in
