To Ash

I keep a short list of RPGs that do something mechanically brave enough to justify their existence, and To Ash earned its spot the moment I realised levelling up was making things worse. That inversion is the whole soul of the game. Demitri is a veteran hero defrosted for one last quest, accompanied by Gallium, a sentient, immortal shield whose agelessness quietly underlines what Demitri is losing. The contrast between the two companions gives the story a low-key emotional weight that a bigger studio would have spelled out in cutscenes. Here it just sits in the dialogue, patient. The mechanical hook is genuinely novel. As your level increases, your stats decrease. MP shrinks, attack softens, defense crumbles, speed slows. After tough boss encounters you start losing skills outright, with the most powerful abilities fading first. Equipment you find or purchase can offset the decline for a while, but by the final stretch you are visibly diminished, and that is the point. The Stance system adds a layer of turn-based decision-making on top of the attrition: you can shift Demitri's posture mid-battle to shore up weaknesses or press an advantage, which keeps combat from feeling passive even as his kit shrinks. There is no grinding to escape the decay, because grinding accelerates it. The design traps you in the metaphor. The game runs on RPG Maker, and that engine's visual fingerprints are present. Sprite work is nostalgic rather than original, and a handful of dialogue lines needed a grammar pass. Performance hiccups, particularly around lava areas, were reported by early players, though these seem minor and infrequent. What the budget cannot hide is the intentionality of the sound design: the victory music after each fight is forlorn rather than triumphant, a deliberate choice that reframes every win as one more step toward the end. That detail alone tells you the developer understood exactly what he was making. The dungeons lean into puzzle mechanics and exploration over raw combat padding, which suits the pace. Two modes exist for different appetites. The full RPG experience with combat runs six to ten hours; Adventure Mode, which removes combat and strips things down to story, puzzles, and exploration, clocks in at three to five. It is a thoughtful concession that makes the narrative accessible without diluting the strategic version. The Steam review sample is small but sits at 83 percent positive, which for a low-visibility solo debut is an honest signal rather than a marketing one. The game knows its length, knows its thesis, and ends when it should. That discipline is rarer than it sounds.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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