Ashwalkers Review (PC)

As my party of four sits down around a campfire I dump three units of wood in, making sure that everyone is as warm as possible. There’s not enough food to go around, which is why I schedule some exploration. I get the rations I need and, luckily, I have the medicine required to patch up my hurt scout.

After another round of rest, my party is as prepared as it can be to explore the wastes. My small team will be challenged by monsters and will have to deal with environmental hazards. They will also find clues that will allow them to save their brethren from a world destroyed by volcanoes.

Ashwalkers is created by Nameless XIII and published by Dear Villagers and 24 Entertainment. The game is available on the PC via Steam and aims to deliver a choice-driven adventure with a post-apocalyptic feel.

The story is built around a squad of explorers from the Citadel, each with their designated role and skills. This small group can move fast enough to find the clues that lead to the legendary Dome of Domes. This is the only structure that’s able to offer hope for long-term survival in the aftermath of a volcanic focused cataclysm.

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The air outside is hard to breathe, the landscape is unforgiving, supplies are low. A sense of desperation and hope pervades the writing and the story. The entire experience is also clearly designed to be played repeatedly, making new choices, uncovering new bits of lore, and reaching new end states. Ashwalkers quickly captures the attention with its setting and barely sketched cast of characters. Unfortunately, the gameplay struggled to keep me engaged in the long run, even as the story made solid efforts to deliver twists and reveals.

Most of the time players will use the left mouse button to tell their squad of four where to go or to interact with highlighted objects. The group moves slowly and deliberately. Once in a while, an encounter pops up and choices come up, built around the four-character archetypes: leader, diplomat, scout, and warrior. The focus, at least initially, is on finding the beacons that will lead to the Dome of Domes.

This part of Ashwalkers is very limited. Fortunately, the developers have also created a resource-focused set of camp interactions. Each of the characters needs to stay warm, eat up, rest to restore energy, and keep their morale up. This means they need food and wood, with the occasional medicine bag required when someone gets hurt.

Resource allocation can only happen around a campfire. Once everyone gets stuff from backpacks players can schedule activities. Sleeping is for rest and talking is for morale. But far more important are guarding and exploration, which can net quite a few more resources.

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The design is elegant but it suggests a scarcity that is never really present. I almost always had more resources than my group could carry and only once felt that failure was a possibility. Regardless, I very much enjoyed the camp moments and the decisions that I was forced to make. There’s nothing in the world interactions that kept me engaged.

The biggest problem with Ashwalkers is how slow it is. Characters move slowly, transitions between scenes are slow, it takes a few seconds between a mouse click and the full rendering of a piece of text. The game manages to feel majestic and weighty for about one hour before it becomes frustrating. The game needs to make it easier for players to move through both text and terrain quicker.

Ashwalkers makes a great first impression. The stylized look, complete with the focus on gradations of gray, creates an intriguing atmosphere. And there are gameplay moments that the presentation enhances, adding to the feelings of pressure, fear, and hope. There are also environments, especially interiors, that look bad, with limited detail and no sense of personality. The sound design is very much a disappointment, adding to the emptiness of the world and underlying how slow the game can be.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion