First-person narrative puzzle adventure 'Inner Ashes' comes to Switch June 30th, 2023

Parent-child relationships. Illness. The proximity of death. The balance of the life we have lived. But can anyone say why there aren’t more videogames that include these ingredients? But what have we learned along the way? How much have we been moved? Courage is the raw material with which Calathea Game Studio has developed its first video game, Inner Ashes. A title different from all, that you can already add to your wishlist and that will be available on June 30 in digital version for Switch.

Inner Ashes proposes that: a learning, a discovery experience. Using the language of videogames to tell everything that literature, cinema and poetry have been revealing since the world began. And also other videogames, of course, like That Dragon Cancer, Firewatch or Last Day of June. Titles in which emotions, empathy and human nature offer an experience that will remain engraved in each player.

That said, you may think there’s not much left to tell. But we haven’t told you about the game yet. Inner Ashes puts you in the shoes of Henry, a man who has just been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s disease. His memories begin to fade, his world is shaken. And at that moment, he receives a letter from his daughter, Enid, whom he hasn’t seen for years. Knowing that the end is near, he needs to face the most important mission of his life: to recover and put in order the memories that explain his relationship and conflict with her. But how to do it, when you have Alzheimer’s and your mind is deteriorating without remedy?

This is the trigger for a first-person adventure in which you will have to go through dreamlike scenarios, endowed with a melancholic peace, an uncomfortable placidity. In them you will find challenges that recreate the obstacles that an Alzheimer’s patient overcomes in his daily life. In fact, two of the most important tools to thrive in the game are authentic utensils that are fundamental in the reality of an Alzheimer’s patient: the Post-It and the tangram puzzle. Because the Calathea Game Studio team has gone to great lengths to create a work that is respectful, educational and full of meaning.

Inner Ashes is one of those videogames that, being small, make this industry bigger. A work that had to exist, whose release fills us with pride.