Ashwalkers is an open-ended survival simulator set 200 years after a huge volcanic catastrophe has ravaged the planet, leaving it barren and blanketed in blizzards of grey mud. On a journey to the Dome of Domes, a post-apocalyptic utopia on the fringe of the world, gamers handle a celebration of 4 explorers: Petra, the fearless chief; Sinh, a expert fighter; Kali, a younger scholar; and Nadir, the ever-observant scout.

Ashwalkers options crafting, useful resource administration, survival techniques, and a plethora of interpersonal and ethical judgement calls, all of this resulting in one in all 34 doable endings. Player selection is the sport’s core mechanic.

“It’s more a laboratory for us than a dystopian story, actually,” Ashwalkers artistic director Matteo Gaulmier mentioned.

If that’s true, Ashwalkers is the grimiest lab this facet of the apocalypse. The sport is coated in clouds of ash, consistently swirling and layered on the display like an previous movie reel. Crisp black outlines and pink splatters of blood spotlight an in any other case desaturated atmosphere, a nod to graphic novels and , a French collection depicting the horrors of xenophobia from the attitude of a distant German village on the finish of World War II. Meanwhile, the Ashwalkers soundtrack builds slowly on itself in digital waves, ultimately trapping gamers in a heavy audio ambiance impressed by Disasterpeace’s work in .

“When we started the game, we had a more classic apocalypse like nuclear winter, and slowly we changed the theme to something more original, less seen,” Gaulmier mentioned. “We found the ashen apocalypse. That was not much exploited, so we went for it and slowly the game started to go almost naturally from black-and-white to shades of gray. That was referring directly to the ashes, of course, gray ashes, and the theme of death.”

The impartial studio constructing Ashwalkers, Nameless XIII, is based mostly in Toulouse, France, and Gaulmier himself is a current graduate of the of images and sport design. The CEO of Nameless XIII is Herve Bonin, a co-founder of Dontnod and co-creator of the long-lasting choose-your-own-adventure collection Life is Strange. Bonin selected to assist Gaulmier and his scholar staff construct out Ashwalkers after realizing they’d shared philosophies with reference to interactive narratives.

“His way of stating story, asking themselves questions on how to do a compelling story, what are the choices, and being the player in a huge universe,” Bonin mentioned. “It’s not the same game as Life is Strange, for sure, but the same kind of detail, same kind of reflection behind it, and the same methodology that the students have already learned. I recognize talent, and when I see talent, only one thing to do is to support that. Matteo and his young team, they are doing amazing things.”

With 34 disparate endings, some playthroughs of Ashwalkers might be quick and contained to a single space, whereas others might be longer and canopy extra floor. Ashwalkers doesn’t choose gamers or provide karma bushes for “good” and “evil” selections. It permits gamers to fiddle with the boundaries of morality and survival, and what it means to be human in excessive — and on a regular basis — circumstances.

“We do not want to judge our players,” Gaulmier mentioned. “We wanted to give them the tools to judge themselves.”

Ashwalkers is heading to PC in April, and it’s out there to now.