Hyper Light Drifter is very reminiscent of 8-bit and 16-bit games, and you've noted in the past the influence The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Diablo had on the game. Because Drifter was more constrained in a lot of ways, we wanted to be able to go pretty wild on our character control with Solar Ash and to open up the pacing of gameplay. Preston: We wanted to create a much larger, freer, and more believable world to get lost in. What spurred the decision to make that jump? This is Heart Machine's second game, and it makes the leap from 2D action role-playing to 3D action platformer. Really though, what's important is that you'll see how this is a Heart Machine game-the connective tissues between the games may not be direct in the sense of continuity with story and worlds and characters, but the style, the atmosphere, the tone, the importance of game feel will all be familiar to those who have played Drifter. Preston: It's more of a silly comment I made in that it can be a galaxy or ten away type of universe. What does that mean in terms of how players should try to connect the stories, settings, characters, and creatures? Narratively, you've said that both Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash take place in the same universe, though they're not directly tied to one another. We chatted with Preston about the game's personal and canonical inspirations, how Unreal Engine helped give life to Rei's fluid gameplay, and why he's so happy with how the game's clouds turned out. This latest creation is described by the Epic Games Store as “ Jet Set Radio meets Shadow of the Colossus, with a bit of Super Mario Galaxy mixed in.” Both are powered by Heart Machine's artful touch and creative director Alx Preston's own desire to navigate trauma. Where Hyper Light Drifter saturates its contemplative RPG gameplay in a pixelated palette of vivid colors, Solar Ash delivers vibrant swirls of kinetic exploration on the skates of Voidrunner Rei. It's not story, worlds, or characters that bond the two together, but style, tone, and atmosphere. Both are colorful, explorative action games by developer Heart Machine, which-while they may share some form of distant related universe-are connected in different ways. They’ve really been pushing on that front and others have followed suit or had their own push for accessibility options.Think of Solar Ash as a sort of spiritual successor to Hyper Light Drifter. I love what has been happening in the industry over the last couple of years, especially with Naughty Dog. It’s just inherent that a 3D game is less accessible than a 2D game mechanically speaking. We’re trying to open it up because we know that it’s going to be a bigger challenge for others out of the gate without actually having enemy encounters or anything like that to add on top. That’s one of the bigger changes here out of the gate offering a variety of difficulty levels because of all those new aspects, because of the different focus here in this game from combat to more of the traversal and exploration. This game requires a bit more on the mechanical side of things to navigate just by virtue of the camera and then you toss in the speed, you toss in the big giant boss creatures, you toss in all these other elements and it can become a big ass challenge that even the easiest version of it can be difficult. I love that look but it’s used because it’s a little simpler and easier to deal with in general for smaller teams that don’t have the luxury of the tech artist or graphics engineer because those things are difficult jobs for very talented people and this is quite a step beyond flat-shading. And that means that it’s like turning elements off from the rendering pipeline typically to get the lower stylized look. You see the smaller indie games that are flat-shaded. It’s not the same as something that’s flat-shaded. All of the industry is really biased towards PBR and the tools that are created and the pipelines that are there and the way that everything intercepts and what the engines are built around, so you have to do a lot of heavy lifting to go against the grain for that and get this kind of stylized more cell-shaded cartoonish or hyper colorful flat look. It’s certainly challenging to have a non- PBR workflow. You know, a lot of very talented folks working on it to get the look that we got out of it. We’ve had a lot of really talented people on the team on the graphics and engineering end of things, tech-art and environment art, et cetera.
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