SKATE LIMBO

Style and substance feel opposed in Solar Ash, Heart Machine’s follow-up to the acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter. It has an abundance of the former, but a vacuum where the latter should be. Visual novelty and slickness keep it skating along but it never manages to fill that void, no matter how many outlandish set pieces, stylish transitions and beautiful landscapes it conjures.

You play as Rei, a ‘voidrunner’ who plunges herself into a blackhole to activate a MacGuffin called the ‘Starseed’, which we’re told can save her planet, which is currently caught in the singularity’s grasp. Inside this black hole is a dreamlike landscape rendered in soft clouds and goopy surfaces, all of it in bold colors. This is the ‘ultravoid’ as the game calls it. It’s delightfully tactile, with Rei plunging into the candyfloss-like hills as she lands, or pulls some of the sticky mass behind her as she jumps. Even the collectables, plasma, are rendered as blobs