A turn-based RPG featuring a Rogue-like storytelling featuring risks that TRULY affect the gameplay and an extensive online PvP mode!
Before you start reading! We recommend that you play this awesome piece of music from the soundtrack of our game while we tell you what it’s about and who we are:
Ash of Gods is a mix between a roguelike role-playing visual novel and an online turn-based strategy game. It has been heavily inspired by The Banner Saga series, Japanese visual novel games, and the spirit of The Darkest Dungeon. The game is being developed with Unity and will be available on PC first.
An emphasis on roguelike storytelling. The choices you make, the paths you take and the battles you fight inevitably affect the story and the world around you. Your team’s resources and time are limited, and on your journey you will face many choices. You decide who lives and who dies to ensure that you continue steadfastly along your path. If you rush forward mindlessly, you will gradually lose your characters, including the major ones. But even your party leader’s death will not lead to “game over”!
This is the heart of our game. We first developed the combat system on paper and then turned it into a web prototype. Over the past six months we’ve played the prototype against more than 2000 players from Steam, Facebook, VK, RPGCodex, RPGWatch, IndieDB, and each time we’ve asked them (and ourselves) the same question: “Aren’t we making a piece of crap?”
What we strived for:
Through our interaction with players, we’ve established a number of “pillars” on which we continue to build and perfect our combat system:
A thousand years before the events of this game, the world was struck by an enormous meteorite. This unparalleled cataclysm set civilization back several centuries. The only glimmer of hope for the handful of survivors was the appearance of the menhirs — huge stones that were scattered across the blighted landscape. These wondrous boulders had the power to heal and help the needy, and it should therefore not come as a surprise that people soon began to worship the menhirs, thereby ushering in the birth of a new religion. It was then that the heralds appeared, strange messengers who tried to convince the leaders of men to leave the menhirs in peace. But humanity spurned the heralds’ plea and there came forth in their place monstrous beings known as reapers, who demanded bloody sacrifices and inflicted untold torments upon the woe-begone people as they left a path of annihilation in their wake. And yet, just as it seemed that humanity’s days were numbered, the monsters mysteriously vanished.
A hundred and fifty years later, the reapers reappeared at the head of a horde of northern Kingdoms and destroyed everything in their path. But the heralds also returned, and they managed to persuade the warring kings of the south to unite in the struggle against their common foe. It was the heralds who headed the forces of free people in a decisive battle from which neither side would emerge victorious. The heroes of the south perished, but not before driving out the reapers. Hundreds of years went by, during which nobody saw the reapers again.
The world has known seven hundred years of peace. But that peace is about to come to an end. The Feast of the Spring Equinox is in full swing, when the bell in the town hall suddenly begins to ring. Captain Thorn Brenin, the bodyguard Lo Pheng, the scribe Hopper Rouley, and many others, do not know yet that the reapers have returned and intend to drown the entire world in blood so that they may awaken the sleeping gods.
Wild, primitive, savage and even a little “Gypsy”. The music is about looming catastrophe, predestination, resistance to fate, honor and valor. We have tried to convey the atmosphere of the impending end of the world with the aid of spine-tingling medieval pagan folk music. Of course, we don’t have the piles of money you need for a live orchestra, but that hasn’t prevented us from recording marvelous live instrumental music with vocals.
Authentic musical instruments that are rarely encountered in contemporary music have been used in the recordings. You will be able to hear instruments such as the “Fidel Plocka” (a medieval European fidule), “Suka Bilgorajska” (medieval Viola), Bulgarian Gadulka, Turkish Kemence, Acoustic and Electric Cello, Arabic Oud, Bouzouki, Mandolin, Acoustic Guitar, Irish Whistle, Polish Taraban (frame drum), Didgeridoo, Jews’ Harp, and many more folkish traditional percussive instruments.
In the photographs above you can see part of the amazing Polish musicians who agreed to help us.
Some examples of characters, landscapes and the interface convey far more than any words could.
The character animation in combat scenes is based on live actors’ motion capture.
Digital Add-Ons (Require $20 tier and above):
Physical Add-Ons (Require Physical Tier: $75+):
IMPORTANT: Shipping costs are NOT included for $125 / $250 / $500 tiers.
We’re a small team and most of us work remotely. What unites us is the belief that good games — just like good movies, books, music, comics and graffiti on the walls — turn the surrounding reality into a slightly better place. Many of the team members knew each other in the past, and now we’ve joined forces for the express purpose of working on Ash of Gods.
FOUNDER AND DEVELOPER: Nikolay Bondarenko
Throughout his career, Nikolay has either developed or overseen the development of games. In 2004 he began working as a quest developer for the Canadian company Streko-Graphics. In 2008 he continued his career at TvxGames in Russia, where he was involved in the development of games for social networks. For the last 6 years he has been the head of the development department at one of Russia’s leading game publishers, GameNet. Now he is the chief ideologist of the Ash of Gods team. His job consists of generating ideas, writing code and persuading people. Known to be bad-tempered. Bearded.
NARRATIVE DESIGNER: Dmitry Erokhin
Adores playing all kinds of games: board games, roleplaying games, roleplaying tabletop games, live-action roleplaying games and of course video games. He’s worked for Nival, TvxGames, Innova and GameNet as a producer, managing editor and game designer. He’s involved in all aspects of Ash of Gods, from the story to the UI/UX. He is notable for his excruciating nitpicking, attention to detail and sense of humor. Ill-tempered. Bearded.
GAME DESIGNER: Ivan Mahazinnikov
Has been a game designer since 2004, when he started his career at Katauri Interactive. Had a hand in Space Rangers 2, King’s Bounty, Royal Quest and a dozen other smaller projects. The last few years he’s been freelancing and now works for Ash of Gods. He loves to play (as well as create) tactical and role playing games. Also, he tried his hand as a science fiction writer and can be proud of three published books and more than twenty stories. An optimist with a positive outlook on life.
ENVIRONMENT ARTIST: Julia Jokhova
An artist, illustrator, cosplayer and freelancer. Her first job was at Solar-games, where apart from game art she also drew a ton of icons, interfaces and textures. She was drawn to Ash of Gods by the desire to participate in the creation of a game with an interesting storyline and inspired atmosphere. She is a lover of beautiful things with an enthusiastic personality.
ART DIRECTOR: Igor Podmogilnikov
An architect who adores artistic woodwork and sculpturing. He’s managed to work at Streko-Graphics, Vogster, TvxGames, Astrum, Mail.ru, Game Inside and Red Machine. He’s an amazing character designer who believes that classical 2D is seriously cool. Igor prefers to do things as spectacularly as possible—sometimes at the expense of realism. Easy-going character.
ANIMATOR: Yuri Antonov
Wrote his first guide for the SEGA game Syndicate in a school text book, asked his mom to type it out, stuck some pictures onto it, and went on to sell photocopies of the book. Ever since he dreamt of making games. Before he could join the Ash of Gods team, he had to pick up a lot of diverse experience. He worked as a graphic designer, HTML coder, Flash animator, layout artist, tutor, photojournalist and motion designer. He is responsible for 2D animation in the project. Bearded.
More than anything else, we want to make Ash of Gods a well-crafted, captivating game, based on our vision and the vision of our community, rather than what the investors would like to see. Classical, hand-drawn animation, a storyline for adults, an enthralling multiplayer mode that won’t cost an arm and a leg — these are all features that lie at the very heart of our project, and we don’t intend to compromise on them.
Currently we’re using our own savings for the project, which is enough to finish about 75% of it. The remaining 25% we want to fund through Kickstarter, otherwise we’ll have to cut down significantly on the content.
Right now we’re at a crossroads where we need to decide: do we go all out and include everything, or do we cut out the parts for which we don’t have enough money?
Most of our funds are being spent on external contractors — to create all the animation on our own is just too large an undertaking. For instance, it takes a very good animator at least twenty days’ work to create all the animation and effects for one action figure. Mirball Animation Studio is doing almost all the battle animation for us, and that’s the lion’s share of our expenses. We need to start production as soon as possible in order to be finished by November.
All funds raised via the Kickstarter will go directly towards game development, Kickstarter fees and fulfilling the physical rewards. Other costs, like marketing the finished game, will be derived from our other income.
Important note about shipping and physical rewards
We’ve already identified the companies and the artists who’ll be making the physical rewards for us. We vetted nine different transport companies, including DHL, Fedex and EMS. We plan to use UPS for worldwide delivery as they offered the most favorable terms of delivery and insurance. We’ll start manufacturing the physical rewards the moment we’ve collected the minimum required amount, and we’ll start shipping them as soon as we’ve checked your addresses. All the goods will be shipped from Moscow, Russia. We’ll use three pricing categories to calculate the shipping costs. Each of the categories will depend on the size and weight of the parcel and the destination country. Each parcel will be insured at its full value, so if a package is damaged or not delivered, we’ll reship it at the expense of the transport company. It’s important to note that some countries have customs duties that are impossible to calculate before shipping the parcel. This means that final delivery costs may vary slightly.
We’d like to thank everyone who’s believed in us and supported us throughout the development period, played the early graphicless prototype with us, given valuable advice or just showed an interest in the project and followed our progress. And, of course, a huge thanks to everyone who supported or plans to support us here, on Kickstarter.
We are also always happy to chat with the players, share information about our game and answer any of your questions, so please follow us on these social networks:
You can also follow the development in detail and track the progress of the game by reading our regular development diary:
The project has been in active development since the summer of 2016, and during this time we’ve come a long way from the original idea and the desktop prototype to arriving at a playable multiplayer build. During this time we’ve had to overcome many complications, from adapting Unity to our needs, to ensuring the stability of the game server.
Now our main goal is to implement all the planned game mechanics with the necessary detail and quality that they deserve. Our biggest risk right now is the possibility that this level of quality, together with the need to translate huge volumes of text into other languages, may delay the release.
We promise to put in every effort to land the project on time, and also to keep you in the loop about any changes in the graphics, gameplay or any of our other commitments that may affect you.