It’s a fact that there’s a right way and a wrong way to make a horror game. Unfortunately, ASD Studio and Axyos Games’ first-person horror game, FIRE AND ASHES, has committed some of what I can call sins of horror gaming.
FIRE AND ASHES follows Harry, a man who’s been institutionalized and trapped in a twisted asylum where he must fight for his survival and uncover why he’s there.
The controls for FIRE AND ASHES are alright but are overcomplicated for combat for some reason. Graphics-wise, the game looks decent, along with the lighting…and that’s where the praise stops.
Combat is clunky; animations for opening doors are bugged, there are supposed to be subtitles (if you turn them on), but they don’t appear, or when they do, it’s late. You can “Swim,” but I shit you not, they just animated the arms making the swimming motion, but you’re actually just WALKING underwater; yes, you sink to the bottom and just walk. Even single-person dev teams are capable of making the character float in water!
Another thing I noticed right away that became annoying quickly was the looping ambiance/music. Usually ambient background sounds/muic loop in a way that you won’t notice, but here, you do. The ambient sound/music will fade out…then start back up.
This is where the SINS of horror gaming come in. The ultimate sin in horror gaming is used a lot in FIRE AND ASHES, that sin being: loud noises = scary. There is a lot of that. Random loud noises and cheap sound stings for even cheaper scares, I.E., a chair turns, a light bulb breaks, a gurny moves a bit, etc. The game has more of a cheap carnival funhouse than a horror game.
Another sin I’ve noticed was asset flips. The beginning cinematic shows the inside of a house that’s been used in so many horror games that I think everyone knows the layout by heart now. The enemies I’ve seen in another game trailer for another upcoming indie horror game (Not mentioning it here, as the devs of that game are not 100% on the level and I don’t want to give them any free advertisement).
Overall, FIRE AND ASHES was hard to play. It comes across as someone who thought they could just make a horror game by using the basics of basic horror game scares/tropes that are dated. This game’s selling point is that you can use a mic that will somehow affect gameplay. I don’t have the setup for that, but I think if I did, I would have found more bugs.
With stuttering animation, obviously flipped assets, AI voice acting (assuming, since there are no credits/castlist), horrible sound design, scares so predictable you might as well say there are no scares at all, and an unoriginal story. I seriously have my doubts about the dev’s intentions with this game, as the game has an identity problem, as it does not know if it wants to be a horror game or an action game that takes place in a horror environment; either way, I’m forced to give it a 1/10.
