Court of Ashes

6/10 Decent. It's a visual novel where play as one of five available characters of a council of advisers for a nation that has just had its King assassinated. You have to manage decisions with resource management and relationships - the goal being to direct the war effort to a satisfactory conclusion (which uses resources), whilst sweet-talking the other advisers to a stage where they'll support you in gaining the throne for yourself. Resource management is fairly simple, every couple of turns depending on the national situation, you automatically produce certain resources; Taxes (gold), Goods, food and military. You can spend these resources on war council decisions that affect the flow of the war and/or affects the production of resources for the future. Building up relationships seems to be limited to just visiting and selecting what the other adviser likes to hear. Build up enough of a relationship and you unlock mini-stories - the problem is, these mini-stories conclude too later, often when the war has ended, but they take place as if the war was either just starting or you're in the midst of it all. Basically, this is a visual novel that is maybe, a touch too ambitious. Everything generally works, but things fall out of place, like a jigsaw that hasn't quite been cut to accurate size. The result is sometimes you get some 'eh, what?' moments from the storyline. I'll give an example; It's a bad one; I played the game perfectly winning the war, killing everything and being super popular. My ending bugged out and I got an ending where I lost the war. Clearly, a flag/setting didn't trigger properly - and for a game from 2019, it really should have been ironed out by now. Having said that, I can overlook that bug because the game is free, it is fairly short (3.3 hours = 2 playthroughs) and it is quite an interesting effort. You don't really lose anything by trying this, short of an hour and half of your time, so give it a go with a cup of tea and see what you think, that's my suggestion. :)

i Liked it. Its more than an hour to play and I like that I can play different character in different routes.

Nice story, fun game

A bug is blocking me just at the start of the game (when choosing the counillor to follow, I am unable to continue after choosing 1 of them and I cannot go back to choose another). It is like if the image is not fitting fulling in my screen and the continue button is not apparing. (I tried several resolutions + used the tab or any possible shortcuts). I will change my review if the bug is fixed.

I just realized this game doesn't have nearly as many reviews as it should? I loved the worldbuilding, gameplay, artwork, and all the character options in this kingdom sim. I think I've played as all the characters now except the general. Really nice game, can't believe it's free!

☀️