Ashwalkers is an upcoming game from the new indie developer Nameless XIII, which was created by the co-founder of Dontnod Entertainment, Herve Bonin. Dontnod saw success with its Life is Strange series, with games focused on player’s choices and how they affect the overall outcome of the game. Ashwalkers takes a similar approach by having 34 different endings to the game, each resulting because of the choices of players. It also has a vastly different feel compared to Life is Strange, especially because it’s a survival narrative story.
In an interview with Game Rant, founder of Nameless XIII, Herve Bonin, and Ashwalkers’ creative director, Matteo Gaulmier, talked about the upcoming game and some of its design choices. From inspiration to aesthetics to overall feel of the game, Game Rant got a peek behind the curtain about how Ashwalkers was developed and what led to its creation.
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Ashwalkers is already listed on the Steam store, though there’s no official release date for the game yet. As potential players can see from the previews, the game is done entirely in grayscale, which makes sense when considering the environment of the game: the aftermath of a volcanic apocalypse. As for how the developer decided on the setting of a volcanic apocalypse, Gaulmier said the original prototype of the game was very much modeled after a traditional apocalypse at first, but they wanted to go for something that’s typically unexplored.
In development, there was the idea of having a world completely covered in water or even an insect apocalypse, but ultimately they decided to pursue an ashen, volcanic apocalypse. Drawing inspiration from other black and white graphic novels, Gaulmier had originally wanted the game to be in “pure black and pure white” during its initial development. However, after deciding on the volcanic apocalypse environment, it was decided to change the vision a bit and make it grayscale, rather than pure white or black.
"We changed the world to a gray artistic direction and it matched great with our universe and what we were trying to say, so we went for it."
There is, however, one color that will appear for players during the game - red. In the context of Ashwalkers, red is the color of blood, of danger. Typically, if red appears during a playthrough, it means something has happened that leads to danger, injury, or even death. Gaulmier discussed how different colors, like blue or green, were tested out in the game, but ultimately found that red worked the best overall.
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The Ashwalkers demo is available on Steam thanks to the Steam Game Festival 2021, and gameplay very much looks and feels like a comic book. Gaulmier said this was absolutely intentional, having drawn a lot of inspiration from the likes of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics or Manu Larcenet’s Le Rapport De Brodeck - both of which are told in pure black and white visuals. Additionally, the game has a soundtrack but no voice actors, which was another very intentional decision.
Ashwalkers is a completely text-based narrative, and gameplay is meant to emulate things like TTRPGs (tabletop RPGs) and “choose-your-own-adventure” books. By staying with something completely text-based, it gave the creative team the liberty to add pretty much anything without needing to animate it in-game. It also allows the soundtrack to have a full impact and affect on the player, according to Bonin, because the music is the only sound players will hear throughout the game.
"A bit like your tabletop RPG, you can say, 'okay, there is a soldier coming in front of you.' You don't have to actually modelize one soldier coming in front of you with the sound, the explosion - you just have to tell your player, 'okay, there is this thing in front of you.'"
Ashwalkers has an anticipated release date for sometime later in 2021, but players can get their hands on the demo version on Steam. Though it’s only the demo, it’s still got quite a few opportunities for replayability, which is something the developer wanted for the game. Players can wishlist Ashwalkers on Steam to stay up-to-date about its full release.
Ashwalkers is currently in development for PC.