Talking to a small part of the team behind Inner Ashes Three ideas constantly fly over my head that mark the conversation. Three concepts that navigate between sorrow, envy and joy in the face of such a small and big project at the same time.
Just like That Dragon, Cancer dared to do almost 10 years ago (fabric), Inner Ashes he approaches a devastating disease from a milieu that rarely dares to talk about real problems, and he does so without hot flashes or hidden references behind a story completely removed from what he wants to tell. This is going to have Alzheimer and not remember the steps to make a coffee.
The indie in the shadow of triple A
The grief is not only on a personal level. Aware of what the reality of the medium is today, and the time and money that we can humanly dedicate to smaller and less ambitious projects in an industry in which there are no more launches in the same day, I am sorry that the enthusiasm in back of Calathea Game Studio may crash against a reality that is not supported by bombastic awards and well-intentioned articles.
“It is a story worth telling. Then, about how to continue developing and how to continue at the company level, well I think we take this a bit as a lesson. To say, well, we have gone from the concept to releasing a game”.
Holding down a second job and organizing themselves however they can, probably even into the odd hours Jose Montano (lead designer) y Veselka Petrova (concept artist and graphic designer) of how to take advantage of this opportunity could be the key so that in the future that previous experience and contacts can open the doors to a much larger project and for a larger audience.
There is envy, that of being aware of the extent to which my reality and yours are no longer the same, that of understanding that I will probably never again have the opportunity to take those risks or face that courage. It is a joy to see that mixture of illusion and nerves in his eyes.
When the protagonist is a disease
Precisely because of this small nature, almost a step towards another world that is much more ambitious and lacking in risks, the idea behind Inner Ashes, despite the apparent ambition of telling a complex story, remains in such a limited objective. Small puzzles, a lot of narrative, and a great weight on the shoulders of the artistic that ends up leaving the playable part more aside than it should.
“We have a team that is fairly new. We wanted something mechanically easy, not too complex, so some first person puzzles is something we thought we could do. Something with reflections, like two realities, and at that moment we realized that this was a bit like when a person with Alzheimer’s is talking to you and suddenly they leave and it’s as if they were in a completely different reality.
He acknowledges that the team has gone through several cases of Alzheimer’s that have touched them very closely and that Inner Ashes It seemed the perfect excuse to be able to take advantage of that creative freedom and contribute a little to society by giving visibility to the problem.
Counting on the support of experts to be able to reflect this hard disease without falling into sentimentality and in the most accurate way possible, Inner Ashes Arrives today on all platforms now Steam. We wish them all the luck in the world and that in the future they can give us even greater joy.
