It was a Day 1 ideal for us to focus on freedom of movement. Preston: Because Hyper Light was very restricted in a lot of ways, we wanted to be able to go pretty wild on our character control. What goals were set in regards to making this turn out so well? PCI: The sense of speed and freedom of movement on display in the videos I’ve seen is enthralling. That painterly look is a challenge in 3D! There are definitely certain aesthetics that you can achieve in 2D that you can’t in 3D and vice versa that are appealing. Preston: The simplicity of 2D has an allure to it, on the production side. PCI: Is there anything the team misses about working with a 2D world compared to a 3D one? So I think there are some spiritual threads that wove their way through instead of really specific ideas. Plus, the size of the Solar team and great collaboration throughout the project led to a lot of fresh ideas and perspectives. That being said, Solar is a very different game in a lot of ways, and the crossover between the gameplay mechanics and even the world itself is more limited generally. Usually, as a creator, if you have a neat idea, you want to use it somewhere. Preston: With any project, it’s kind of inevitable that things end up on the cutting room floor. PCI: Were you able to reuse any ideas from HLD for Solar Ash that were limited by the first game’s format and style? The variability between different players and play styles, including the immense chasm between the speeds you can travel on both ends of the spectrum, will likely lead a larger deviation with this game. I will say that Solar Ash is notably larger in scale, in terms of how much landscape you traverse, but I can’t with great accuracy speak to if it’s going to be a much longer experience. It’s up to the player and how much they want to explore: what parts of the optional content they are invested in, if they want to soak in the scenery and the atmosphere or if they’re more the type that just wants to blaze through objectives. Is that the case, or did you aim for a similar amount of content? PCI: I’m assuming Solar Ash will be a notably longer experience than HLD. Our traversal overall is so much different from Drifter. In Solar Ash, we have a way more open world to explore in multiple dimensions, the speed and agility of our character is incredible, and we’re doing some pretty wild stuff on the tech side for our cloud-surfing and bosses. Preston: Solar Ash is a 3D platformer whereas HLD is a 2D overhead hack-n-slash – those two genre differences can be pretty immense. PCI: When it comes to general game design, how did Solar Ash‘s direction differ from HLD‘s? It is an immense coordinated effort to weave it all together. You have to consider all the different angles, types of collision, optimizations. Preston: Time was a huge issue for us on many fronts! Everything takes longer, takes more work in general when it comes to 3D and the nature of working with a freeform camera. What were the hardest things the team had had to face while becoming familiar with such different tools? PCI: The technological shift from making a pixel game to such a lush 3D world is immense. Preston: There’s a quality to our tone, atmosphere, our overall aesthetic and the worlds that we create that we strive to make sure align well with all of our projects in order to make us recognizable as a studio. PCI: Which of Hyperlight Drifter‘s core concepts did you want to ensure you focused on when making Solar Ash? Why – We wanted to create a much larger, freer, and more believable world to get lost in. PCI: When and why was the decision made to take your next game in such a majorly different direction? Without further adieu, let’s chat Solar Ash. We got to pose some questions to Alx Preston of Heart Machine, the developer behind both games, regarding the narrative and design changes present in Solar Ash. Solar Ash is the upcoming successor to the acclaimed game Hyperlight Drifter.
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