Drowning Ashes

A ruined capital choked by an encroaching ash curse provides the bleak backdrop for Drowning Ashes, a turn-based RPG that treats every hostile encounter as a potential addition to your party. Its central hook is compelling: defeat strange creatures, learn what makes them dangerous, then recruit and equip them to fight alongside you. The mood leans heavily into grim fantasy and lonely exploration, with a Souls-inspired sense that every shortcut, healing point, and recovered resource matters. Beneath the monster-collecting framework sits a mystery about the city’s collapse, the survivors still wandering its remains, and the player character’s own unexpected return.

Combat revolves around reading opponents and targeting elemental or tactical vulnerabilities to earn additional actions, allowing a well-prepared team to seize momentum before a battle turns lethal. Players select from five heroes, recruit more than 40 monsters, and shape their roles through equipment that can grant new techniques rather than merely raising numbers. Exploration takes place across interconnected ruins where hidden routes and opened shortcuts reduce the danger of repeated trips, while Wellsprings refill the limited healing flasks needed to endure longer expeditions. Progress therefore comes from smarter party construction, better gear, knowledge of enemy behavior, and careful use of the materials gathered from fallen foes.

What separates Drowning Ashes from a standard creature collector is its harsher, more deliberate structure: monsters are not disposable captures but flexible party members whose weaknesses can be as important as their strengths. The equipment system encourages experimentation, letting familiar recruits perform differently depending on the skills and weapons assigned to them, while the oppressive world rewards thorough map knowledge over reckless grinding. It feels like a smaller-scale meeting point between Pokémon-style team building and the attritional exploration of Dark Souls, though its battles remain firmly turn-based. Players who enjoy difficult RPGs, dark atmosphere, and assembling specialized teams should find plenty to engage with, while genre newcomers should expect a demanding but readable learning curve.