Ash

Introduction

"Ash" was developed by Midori_Fragments and cutiesbae using RPG Maker VX Ace and was one of several entries in the Twisted Fairy Tales event. A game making jam meant to take classical fairy tales and twist them back to how they were before Disney and all of them stepped in. It was times to remind people of why so many of these stories were written by a duo known as the Brothers Grimm.

Story

"Ash" is highly condensed retelling of "Cinderella" with a twist. As you can imagine this means the story ends with a rather dark ending than one where our main character manages to escape from the clutches of her evil step mother.

Gameplay

On the gameplay side of things the game consists of a couple of mini-games and puzzles. While some of these blend into the story rather well.



The mini-game where you need to tell the prince which musical instrument was played over the course of a short tune comes across as an attempt to pad out the game's overall run time. Outside of that, the game's mini-games aren't particularly fun, but they aren't unpleasant either.

Graphics

The game features a lot of custom art assets whose only real draw back is that some of them really give away the sort of ending you can expect out of this game.



Music

On the musical side of things the game is alright I suppose. Though, I think the most interesting aspect of the music is that the song that plays while your at the party with the prince got my Let's Play for this game hit with a copyright claim. Thankfully the video wasn't pulled, but I wasn't exactly thrilled to see it get monetized by Rumblefish, a company famous for claiming ownership to the songs within the public domain.

Conclusion

I'll admit that I'm not particularly pleased with how this game ends. As I mentioned in my Let's Play for this game, I'm a sucker for happy endings. On the other hand, I can't deny that both endings for this game are more in line with classical fairy tales. So while I don't personally find game satisfying from a storytelling perspective. It may appeal to those with darker leanings.

On the other hand, I think most would agree that the musical section of this game feels like padding that was shoehorned into the game in order to meet the bare minimum time requirement for an entry in the Twisted Fairy Tales event. At least if you wanted your entry to count as proper game instead of a demo.

They must abide by site rules and be at least 10 minutes long.

But to end on a more positive note, the game is definitely elevated a bit by its custom art assets. Even if the game is pretty short in the grand scheme of things. In fact, if you cut out the musical mini game I think this game would be shorter than some of the entries in the site's fifth year anniversary event. All and all this game is probably worth a quick look if you have ten minutes or so to spare.