Ash of Gods , an upcoming turn-based tactical RPG from Aurum Dust, clearly wears its inspiration on its sleeve. Scrolling past screenshots it’s perfectly natural to think it’s a spinoff or sequel to The Banner Saga, but it’s actually got nothing to do with Stoic Studio’s viking adventure. In fact, Ash of Gods’ dark and desperate medieval world has more in common with the Dark Ages than any other era.

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“ It certainly sounds like permadeath is going to be a very real thing – even for the main characters.

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“ Strategies are going to shift and evolve based on your party composition.

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“ You don’t have to save up your big abilities as much as you would in other games since every single encounter is a do-or-die situation.

Ash of Gods 12 IMAGES

I recently got my hands on a brief hour-long demo build and played through the tutorial, two more fights, and a handful of dialog scenes and choice-driven area exploration. It’s hard to really pin a specific genre to Ash of Gods due to how nuanced its systems can be.At the start of my demo I learn of an ancient war between a group of immortals and a strange, powerful group of beastly enemies. At the climax of the battle most of the human-looking characters begin to glow and sacrifice themselves – turning to stone – to banish the evil forces. The game picks up 2,000 years later, with you controlling one of the immortals that was wounded in the fight and never sacrificed himself.When you’re in combat, Ash of Gods (due out in March on PC) plays out as a tactical RPG much like The Banner Saga, but then the dialog and area exploration pieces feature text-based adventure mechanics and choice-driven gameplay to keep things fresh. The result is a game that’s extremely slow-paced and requires both lots of reading and careful decision-making.Before a battle starts you can pick from your stable of hero characters to go into combat, all of which are named with actual personalities. Since death is a very real possibility in Ash of Gods due to its evolving, fluid story that supposedly adapts to your actions, you have to be careful during fights. I’m not sure how it works exactly yet, but it certainly sounds like permadeath is going to be a very real thing – even for the main characters.Once combat starts, every character has a Health value and an Energy value with a grid of blue squares and orange squares extending from them. Movement within blue squares is free each turn, but going into the orange could use up some energy. Battles have a delicate risk vs. reward balance built into them because each character may have abilities that cost either health or energy to use, or could build either health or energy when used.Since characters take double damage when their energy is totally gone, it introduces some interesting dynamics. Do you go all-in on dealing lots of health damage to kill them outright, or do you cripple their energy reserves first to limit their damage potential and follow-up with a huge damage-dealing blow after that? Strategies are going to shift and evolve based on your party composition.Combat was very slow-paced and characters all did a lot of damage, so you likely won’t get more than a few turns with each of your characters in a fight. This means you don’t have to save up your big abilities as much as you would in other games since every single encounter is a do-or-die situation.After the fighting is over most areas present you with a beautiful illustrated map (just like the lush hand-drawn characters) with points of interest peppered around. Clicking on each point opens up dialog windows that can be navigated like a text adventure game, opening up the branching narrative possibilities. The build I tried didn’t delve into this too much so I’m not sure how much influence you really have over the story just yet.If the combat is able to maintain this degree of complexity and nuance throughout the entire campaign, Aurum Dust could have a real sleeper hit on their hands.You can follow the game’s updates on their Steam page

David Jagneaux plays a ton of role-playing games. Talk RPGs and more with him on Twitter at @David_Jagneaux