On the audio front, Solar Ash’s music is mostly concerned with setting the mood rather than providing memorable melodies, but the game’s voice acting is well done (something you can usually count on with Annapurna-published games). Lots of indie games have gone for the stylized flat-textured look since Journey popularized it a decade ago, but Heart Machine really makes it sing with sharp edges, vibrant colors, and some impressive architecture and giant boss designs. While the writing didn’t really grab me, the world of Solar Ash is certainly striking looking. While her importance is ultimately revealed, Rei feels like an outsider for most of the game, and so did I, as what you’re doing and the story the game is telling feel largely disconnected. The game does a lot of telling rather than showing, with the story mainly being delivered by monologuing NPCs and assorted logs scattered around the world. Solar Ash does more to flesh out its world than the narratively-efficient Hyper Light Drifter, with plenty of spoken dialogue, sidequests, and supplementary material to read, but I didn’t find the end result that compelling. Seems simple enough, but there are plenty of hints that things aren’t quite as they seem, leading to a fairly-well-telegraphed final-act twist. Rei determines the best way to save her planet is to activate the Starseed, a massive sword-like monolith that sits in the middle of the Ultravoid. Rei decides the only way to stop the Ultravoid is to jump directly into it (naturally) and inside she finds the jumbled remnants of other planets, civilizations, and people who previously got sucked in. Solar Ash casts players as Rei, a “Voidrunner” whose planet is about to be pulled into a massive black hole known as the Ultravoid.
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