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.