Solar Ash - What We Know So Far

The PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020 with a disappointing number of PlayStation-exclusive titles. But Solar Ash is one upcoming game that could make PS5 owners happier with their purchase. Sony has announced the third-person 3D action-adventure RPG's release window. It will be available in 2021 on PS5 and PS4, as well as PC. 

Solar Ash's developer is Heart Machine, and it will be the independent developer's second overall game. Heart Machine founder and Solar Ash's creator and director Alx Preston first announced the game on Twitter on Mar. 19, 2019, along with a teaser trailer. Its publisher is Annapurna Interactive, the company behind artistically driven games like The Outer Wilds and What Remains of Edith Finch. Solar Ash is aiming to be one of the first hit indie titles for the current PlayStation console generation. 

Here is everything we know about Heart Machine's mind-bending, gravity-defying Solar Ash so far.  

Solar Ash will be available in June 2021. Sony announced the game's release window along with many other PS5 exclusives during Sony Square, its presentation at the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show. Solar Ash joins a 2021 lineup of PS5-only games that includes Returnal on Mar. 19, Kena: Bridge of Spirits in March, Little Devil Inside in July, and both Stray and Ghostwire Tokyo in October. The new Ratchet & Clank and Horizon Forbidden West will also come out sometime this year.

Solar Ash will be the second title from indie developer Heart Machine, which previously released Hyper Light Drifter, a 2D top-down action-adventure RPG with a 16-bit neon style inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Diablo. Although Hyper Light Drifter was delayed multiple times, it became an unexpected hit and was regularly ranked the among the best games of 2016. It currently has an 88% score on Metacritic. 

The most recent official Solar Ash video is the Introduction Trailer, which premiered during Sony's June 2020 Future of Gaming livestream event. Most of the trailer showcases Solar Ash's setting and gameplay mechanics. It introduces the as yet unnamed player character, a humanoid woman who wields a futuristic weapon attached to her wrist that can take several forms, including a pin-like sword, a whip, and a lasso. She uses it to travel through the game's outer space setting, swinging through a debris field orbiting a black hole and then traveling between dimensions. She visits multiple exotic worlds and a large, shimmering entity before the screen goes black and says, "The Void is calling..." The trailer ends with a brief introduction of the gameplay and the player character's dashing abilities.

The teaser trailer in 2019 introduced even more of the game's exotic locations and gave a glimpse of a battle against an enormous boss.

Few specific story details have been released so far. Solar Ash's setting is described as "a surreal, vivid and highly stylized world filled with wild high-speed traversal, endearing characters, and massive enemy encounters." The game will involve exploring a system of planets ravaged by the Ultravoid, a rift in space that sucks in worlds. The player travels the game world by "surfing" through space or skipping across clouds and delves into the dangerous ruins of collapsed civilizations. 

Thematically, Alx Preston said that Solar Ash will be about "reflection and progress" and will be bigger and more ambitious than Hyper Light Drifter. Preston is known for drawing on personal experience to design his games. Hyper Light Drifter involves the search for a cure to a mysterious plague, inspired by Preston's lifetime of health issues.

Solar Ash will be set in the same universe as Hyper Light Drifter, though it's unclear whether it will tie into that game more directly.