NOCLIP Pocket E63 - Rusty Playground - Solar Ash

Your podcast is a profanity. Welcome back! Today on NOCLIP Pocket,
we’re going to be talking about Solar Ash, a movement-based 3D
platformer which was developed by Heart Machine, the developer of
Hyperlight Drifter. While the aesthetic and other stylistic
elements of this game relate back to Hyperlight Drifter, this game
is very much a departure from the type of thing that that game was,
and I think it may be this difference that made it fly so far under
the radar of so many people, even those that were fans of their
first game. Solar Ash is a platformer that places its emphasis
strongly on its movement mechanics. Your character skates around
the terrain like they have a pair of rocket-powered Heelys, making
use of momentum to jump large gaps and navigate tighter obstacles
with a host of context sensitive mechanics like grappling hook
points and bouncy surfaces. The game also has a unique approach to
boss design, mixing the fluid movement with Shadow of the
Colossus-style encounters by forcing you to navigate your way up
onto them and then accomplish a timed platforming challenge to deal
damage. The weakest part of the game, however tends to be in its
level design, though there was much disagreement between us as to
what specifically we found good and bad, so we encourage you to
give it a try if it seems interesting and make your own decision.
We’re going to be talking about how movement mechanics really make
this game what it is, our favorite and least favorite levels and
why we disagree so much on their quality, and we make a quick note
of IKEA’s diminishing influence in this developer’s work. Thank you
for joining us again this week! We love to talk about all kinds of
games, but the ones that don’t get much attention hold a special
place in our heart. And this was no different. We may have fallen
into different camps on this game in the end, but it was still a
fascinating experience to have and offers insight into how games
like this are designed, especially with how different it is from
the developer’s previous work and how well the mechanics came
together. Did you play this when it came out, or were you one of
the many people who seemed to miss this one? Let us know over in
our Discord or in the comments! Next time, we’re going back to the
GameCube (which would be more novel if we hadn’t just done Monkey
Ball a few months ago) and talking about FROM Software’s card game
RPG, Lost Kingdoms, so be sure to join us for that, if only to say
how much better it would have fit as the Pocket companion for
Inscryption and we just barely missed it.