The game was first announced as Solar Ash Kingdom in March 2019 as Heart Machine's follow-up to their 2016 title, Hyper Light Drifter.

The traversal absolutely takes precedence and the combat is kind of intermingled with that traversal.' Development Especially the scale on the grandiosity of it just feeling impossibly large and you're feeling really tiny and insignificant in as many ways as possible. That was kind of the vision of the game: Control the traversal, the environments that you're moving through, and the spectacle of it all.

The game's focus is less about combat and more on movement, as lead developer Alx Preston stated 'We're traversal first. The player controls the main character Rei, a Voidrunner within a black hole known as the Ultravoid, through a bright-neon colored, three-dimensional landscape, avoiding obstacles and attacking enemies with energy slashes and a phase-shifted and hard light sword, as Rei tries to save her planet. Solar Ash is an adventure platforming game. It is set in the same fictional universe as Heart Machine's first and previous game, Hyper Light Drifter, but there are no direct connections between the two games' stories. The game's story explores themes of trauma and moving on from dramatic, devastating life events. It is also scheduled to release via Steam in December 2022, and for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in Q4 2022. It was released on Decemfor PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows. Solar Ash is a science fiction adventure platforming game developed by Heart Machine and published by Annapurna Interactive.

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