Ash is a new platformer being built for the Commodore Amiga by developer Thomas Mayer Foss, and it borrows its hero from Norwegian folklore. The early footage looks great, and the technical goals behind it are just as interesting as the fairy tale setup.
The project was spotted by Indie Retro News, which picked it up via the AMIGA 4EVER community and Walter Mamo. It's still a work in progress, but there's already plenty to talk about.
A Folk Hero Gets His Shot
Askeladden is a stock character from traditional Norwegian folk tales, usually the youngest of three brothers. Nobody expects much from him, and he tends to succeed anyway. His English name is often given as "the Ash Lad," which explains the game's short title.
Robots coming for human jobs was already a worry. Now the cats want in too. Cat Secretary puts you on the payroll of an office as a four-legged new hire, and the result is a mix of chores, sneaking around and gentle office drama.
Indie Games Plus got hands-on time with a demo of Cat Secretary at Gamescom, the big annual games trade fair in Cologne, Germany. Based on that preview, this one looks like a strange little gem worth keeping an eye on.
First Day on the Job
Here's the setup. You start a new job at an office, and you're never quite sure what the company actually does. People talk business all around you, but you're a cat, so reading isn't really your thing. That's fine, because nobody needs you for the paperwork.
Capcom's 1985 Wild West shooter Gun.Smoke has a new home. Modern Vintage Gamer has released a port of the arcade classic for the Commodore Amiga AGA, the enhanced chipset used by machines like the A1200 and the CD32. If you had a soft spot for dusty frontier towns and outlaws popping out of saloon windows, this one is for you.
This is not the developer's first arcade trip to the Amiga. Modern Vintage Gamer was also behind the recent Amiga version of Zippy Race. That port quickly won over readers at IndieRetroNews, which first reported on this release.
Mini-golf has always been a fairly polite pastime. You line up a putt, nudge the ball past a windmill and hope it drops. Binary Golf, a sci-fi take on the format, has very little interest in polite. Beta sign-ups are now open, and the pitch involves helicopter hats, tornadoes, UFOs and bosses that shoot fireballs at your golf ball.
It sounds chaotic. It also sounds like a lot of fun.
The Hole Moves Where You Want It
The core twist is easy to explain and a little harder to wrap your head around. Each course starts without a fixed hole. Instead, it is dotted with targets that you need to hit and clear away. Once you reach the final target, it turns into the hole itself.
Some games pitch themselves with a big hook. Cinderline goes for a strange one, and it works. You are a bird, you drive a train, and the fate of a dying world rests on one final S'MORE.
A beta demo for this surreal adventure game is now on Steam, and it was recently highlighted by Alpha Beta Gamer, a site that tracks early builds, alphas and betas of indie projects. Here's what's waiting at the platform.
All Aboard the Ash Express
The star of Cinderline is an anthropomorphic bird. You aren't a tourist. You're the one at the controls of a train, rolling through an underground system that has clearly seen better days.
Relaxed Gamers is financed by advertising. You can choose how you want to use this website:
With advertising: we load an advertising script from a third-party ad network. The ad network may set cookies, use your IP address and device information, and may process data outside the EU. We also count your visits for our own visitor statistics (with a random ID stored in your browser).
Ad-free for €0.99 per month: no advertising and no advertising tracking. Cancel at any time.
You can change your decision at any time via "Cookie Settings" at the bottom of every page.
