Announcing Ashes: Hard Reset news

Greeting scavs,

It's been a bit, hasn't it? While we've trickled out small pieces of news on various discords and forums, it's been too long since we've dropped a good and proper official update. Herein we'll compile the various fragments we've teased into a cohesive whole, add some new stuff, and just generally do some rumor control.

First off, the main event:

Ashes: Hard Reset

Hard Reset (HR) is the prequel expansion for Afterglow and will be a linear campaign in the style of 2063. Take the role of the veteran scav Walker as he guides a team of elite soldiers into The City. As events spiral out of control Walker finds out that a long forgotten foe has caught up with him... and that not all injuries are of the flesh.

Planned features include:

• 7 new weapons, including the stealthy suppressed Police Pistol and Xbow, the stylish Lever Action Shotgun and the highly versatile Modular Rifle.
• 9 new enemies: trade fire with the Black Water Bandits and their immortal chief, flee in terror from the Cannibal Gladiator, and learn that even your own eyes can't be trusted when encountering the Possessor Worms.
• 12 maps, including entirely new locations and some that might be familiar to you, from the backwater town of Junction, into the irradiated concrete and glass canyons of The City.
• New ammo, new items, new music, new voices, and more.

HR is spearheaded by team member RetroMuffin34, and at this point in time there is no release date. When It's Done, but hopefully SOON(tm).

Have some screens (WIP!):

Episode 3 Update and Afterglow Post Mortem

Episode 3 remains in pre-production as we hammer out the details of the story and test ideas for new game mechanics. In a way HR will serve as a dry run for some of these ideas, and quite possibly not all of them will survive outside contact. Development is going to remain glacial as most of our attention will be on getting HR out the door, but rest assured Ep3 is not canceled or abandoned.

We've talked internally about what worked and didn't work in Afterglow, and what aspects are worth bringing forward. We closed in on a few sore points and I want to lay these out here:

1. Too Much Dialog - We believe that talking with NPCs is an important feature, and we aren't going to cut it just because some people are proud of being illiterate. That said, we agree the amount of mandatory dialog in Afterglow could be a bit much, especially in the 2nd hub area. We plan on paring down the amount of talking you need to do to progress the main path, while still offering side content and world building dialog should the player choose to engage with it.
2. Unclear Progression - We aren't going to simplify progression or put quest markers down, so don't worry. However there are a few things in Afterglow that were incredibly obtuse and poorly communicated to the player (again, especially in that troublesome 2nd hub). There's no magic bullet that will fix this in all cases, but it's something we will consider much more carefully in the future.
3. The Bike - We know it's jank, and it seems our improvements in handling for Afterglow weren't nearly enough. I believe half of this is a level design problem, and the first part of Sigma in Afterglow was an attempt to relieve some of the issues. It seems even that wasn't quite enough. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we don't know if the bike is going to make the cut going forward. If it does expect another attempt to improve the handling, and more open bike levels with fewer blind corners and sharp turns.
4. The Mutants - From the midpoint on most of the combat revolves around fighting mutants. If you like that, cool, but from a combat variety standpoint things get very stale. Another problem with no magic fix except to be more considerate in our future designs.

Some have said that certain parts in the back half of Afterglow felt rushed, and in truth they were. Our deadline was self imposed, but it was driven by real world commitments and a desire to stop the release from slipping far into 2022. Thus a lot of things didn't get the iteration they needed to be truly polished. We have a better understanding now and a pretty good idea of what not to do, so hopefully we can avoid these pitfalls for Ep3.

Do you have thoughts on this? Is anyone still reading? Does Randy Pitchford deserve the hate? Feel free to leave a comment.

The Question Of Money

We still aren't taking money, and have no immediate plans to start. You could say that's insane or stupid and yeah you're probably right. We appreciate the people offering to line our pockets, but for now if you want to help us out sharing Ashes with your friends is more than good enough. Spread the word.

One day maybe we'll clean up the complete series and throw it up on Steam for a few bucks, but that day is far in the future if it comes at all.

The Team, Such As It Is

Lastly, a quick plug for various team members and also an explanation of where our time goes when it's not being spent on Ashes stuff. If you're allergic to shameless shilling, feel free to bail now.

Retromuffin34 has a youtube channel here. She does a lot of weird Sonic/FnF/Madness Combat stuff so if that's your bag then check it out.

Primeval continues to crank out sick tunes, check him out here. Most recently he made the soundtrack for Dread Templar. But I will once again shill the excellent Ashes soundtracks here:

TDG, our writer, continues to toil away thanklessly in the word mines when he's not ranting about how much Fallout 3 sucks or how garbage modern Star Trek is. He occasionally pens articles for NMA, so if you like complaining about how shit modern games are on a forum that's probably older than you are check them out

Vostyok, the main man himself, can be found here. His time is split between Ashes and his work alongside Zan developing a "Sexy Goblin DLC" for Hedon. Yes it's really truly real and not a joke. He also recently had a bike accident where his face lost a contest with the pavement, so wish him well.

Lastly, I (RefomedJoe, the dude writing this) also have a shitty youtube channel here where I very occasionally post stuff I'm working on. Most recently I was engaged as a level designer for Selaco.

Until next time scavs, stay safe out there.