https://store.steampowered.com/app/1755340/Inner_Ashes/
[June 30th is just around the corner, and that means that the release of Inner Ashes is imminent. We at Calathea Game Studio are very excited; very soon you will be able to enjoy our first game, and we hope it will be as unforgettable an experience as it was for us to create it.
If you are not familiar with Inner Ashes, let us give you a brief introduction. Our protagonist is Henry, a former forest ranger diagnosed with early Alzheimer's disease. After receiving a letter from his only daughter, Enid, he will embark on an introspective journey through his mind to try to remember why they grew apart. In the role of Henry and under a first-person perspective, you will explore dreamlike scenarios and solve puzzles to put his mind in order and reconstruct his past.
Now, similar to Henry, we are going to recall and navigate through the memories of over four years of development that have led to Inner Ashes.
Inner Ashes was born as a joint Master's Thesis between four postgraduates. The original members of what is now Calathea Game Studio met there, as students who specialized in the different roles needed to make a video game (programming, design, 2D and 3D art, production and marketing).
The initial idea at a playable level was to make a puzzle title, specifically a type of puzzle based on the concept of "two worlds" or "two realities". This premise gave rise to the key aspect of what is now Inner Ashes: the story was to star a person with Alzheimer's disease. The reason for this was the relationship that all of the initial members of the design team had had with the disease, through their family members. The image of a person living between two worlds, one real and one distorted due to their mental state, immediately resonated with the team. We saw the opportunity to tell a story that felt close to us, and at the same time to make visible a disease suffered by millions of people around the world.
In fact, during its first months of development and before having a definitive name, the game was known internally as Project Ithaca. This reference to a man's journey through different islands was kept in the final game, but in a metaphorical sense; the journey was to the inside of his mind, and the "islands" were the different dream scenarios Henry visited.
With the aforementioned objective of giving visibility to a real disease, from the beginning it was clear to us that we had to do it with rigor. The documentation work was fundamental from the beginning of the development, and we have been honored to have the advice of someone expert in the field: Marisa Delgado, PhD in Psychology and specialist in aging and neurodegenerative diseases (and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid).
From her we learned, among many other things, that Alzheimer's does not have fixed phases, but symptoms; and that these can affect each patient with a different order and intensity (and even not affect them at all, since not all symptoms affect all people). These symptoms (ranging from short-term memory loss to mood swings or orientation problems, including motor and language difficulties) are reflected in the game through the scenarios that Henry goes through in search of answers. With this in mind, what we propose with Inner Ashes is a story based on an artistic interpretation of the many possible realities of people with the disease.
This research was also reflected in the gameplay mechanics, which are inspired by real therapies that Alzheimer's patients use to mitigate the symptoms of the disease. For example, one of Henry's everyday objects are post-its, in which he writes down tasks or names of objects, and that in his "mental world" will serve to interact with elements of the scenario and solve puzzles. And speaking of puzzles, the tangrams that our protagonist uses to keep his mind agile will have special importance when unlocking key memories of his past with Enid.
In the long road of making Inner Ashes, PlayStation has played a very important role. One of our main achievements as a team was the PlayStation Special Commitment Award, given at the VI PlayStation Awards gala. It was a reaffirmation that we were on the right track, and encouraged us to enter the PlayStation Talents program in early 2020, already with the firm objective of developing and launching a game in which we were increasingly confident.
That year brought us one of the biggest development challenges: the pandemic. COVID-19 disrupted, among many other things, our way of working. For three years, a Discord channel has been our "office"; there we have shared meetings, previews, edited trailers, solved bugs... We have seen each other in person less often than we would have liked, but we have managed to keep the 16 people who currently make up the studio (with an identical proportion of women and men, something we are particularly proud of) as a united team. All in all, we are aware of what a privilege it has been to be able to continue with the development of a video game (and finish it) in such a global context.
In this review we cannot forget you, male and female players. In the last few years, we have been able to take Inner Ashes to video game fairs and events all over Spain, and your reactions to the game gave us encouragement to keep going. In addition, the aforementioned award from PlayStation has been followed by six other awards in various events, rewarding aspects such as visuals or soundtrack.
During these years we have seen Henry and Enid "grow", and we don't want to say goodbye without asking you to immerse yourself in their story and embrace their message. A touching story that speaks of fears and insecurities, but also (and above all) of tolerance and love. Back in 2019, we advocated that video games have an impact on society, and that it is our responsibility to make it positive and memorable; this title is the materialization of that idea.
Enjoy Inner Ashes.
Don't forget to add Inner Ashes to your wishlist, remember that the game will also be available from June 30 on Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
