Almost four years ago, Dagur Dragon sent me the following via email:

I was wondering if you would happen to know what happened to the game ‘Ashes’ and their website?

Thank you,
Dagur Dragon

At the time, I had absolutely nothing to say to him, other than to remark that what had once been the main project website for Ashes was gone, evidently “garbage collected” by the host. There was — and still is — a project entry for Ashes at Old Aiera, but it was relocated to the Aiera Cemetery as of September 2010.

Well…didn’t I just get the most surprising message from two separate sources this morning: Infinitron Dragon via Facebook, and Charles of Classics Remade via a comment. Ashes is back, Dragons and Dragonettes. And what’s more, they’re looking to crowdfund development on the game!

So…what exactly is Ashes?

Ashes: Two Worlds Collide is an original, single player RPG game built on the philosophy of old school rpgs and is strongly inspired by three milestones of RPG history: Ultima VII, Drakkhen and Demon’s Winter. We’re trying to replicate the exploration, atmosphere and compelling plots of these classics while adding some other features.

Features

• Open Seamless World:

  The world of Ashes is open and seamless. You are free to travel where ever you like within the natural constraints of the game.

• Story:

  Ashes: Two Worlds Collide represents one of many stories forged in the minds of a group of pen and paper rpg players over a period of 10 years. Plots, quests and characters were all sculpted with intricate detail.

• Tactical Turnbased Combat:

  We’re not talking Jagged Alliance but we are hoping to implement tactical elements into the turnbased combat system. Anyone who has enjoyed turnbased combat will be relieved to know that Ashes is certainly not a hack and slash game.

• Characterised Party:

  In Ashes You get to create your own party of four characters but they won’t just be a bunch of names and stats. For each member you’ll also have to choose a personality (valiant leader, cynical wrangler, shy intellectual and eccentric weirdo) which will play a very important role in the game.

• Party Dialogue:

  Ashes is all about role playing a party rather than an individual with followers. As such the dialogue system lets you speak using the voice of any party member and use their individual skills as you see fit.

• Reputation:

  Ashes will use a simple but effective reputation system. Kill innocents or steal and your reputation will follow you. Guards will begin chasing you as you enter a town, merchants will refuse to trade with you, and if you really get too far – be prepared for bounty hunters seeking your head.

• Living NPC’s:

  NPCs don’t just stand in one place all day. They live their lives, work in their shops, walk around, eat at lunchtime, sleep at night and so on.

This game was a seriously exciting prospect a few years ago: a 3D, open-world RPG that took a strong visual cue from Ultima 7. Back then, it was being developed as an offline game; in this relaunch, Bruised Faces (the developers) are taking things in a bit of a different direction:

Ashes is being built using WegGL, HTML5 and Javascript which means the game will run in a browser. At the moment Chrome, Firefox and Safari support these technologies.

Now, I’m going to climb up on my soapbox for a minute here…bear with me.

As of right now, the Bruised Faces team haven’t released any screenshots or other media showing off the current look and feel of the game. Some might turn up their nose at the prospect of a browser-based game, but the fact of the matter is that browser-based game engines are, in this day and age, capable of supporting quite advanced graphics (just check out Drakensang Online!) and complex game systems. We have arrived at a point where there need not be any actual difference in gameplay experience between a browser-based game and an offline game, except that to access the former you would double-click the icon for Chrome rather than the icon for the game itself.

A few days ago, T.J. “Enderandrew” Brumsfeld left this comment on another article:

Here is a random tangent to discuss.

As I understand it, some of the Lazarus developers ended up landing jobs on Kingdoms of Amular. I know there are some very talented modders in the Ultima community. Many are split across many projects, some of which appear to be stalled.

Kickstarter is all the rage. Many old game properties are being revived. EA likely wouldn’t license Ultima rights for anything, even a remake of Ultima I that presumably wouldn’t compete with whatever Mythic is doing.

However, that doesn’t mean the Ultima community of fans couldn’t band together with a showcase of their work under one banner, and propose a spiritual successor as a Kickstarter project. It wouldn’t bear the Ultima name, nor take place in Britannia.

But it would blend systems of complex morality (as opposed to good and evil) and complex themes in a traditional fantasy setting.

You could license a relatively low-cost engine ( http://unigine.com/products/unigine/licensing/ ), use an open source engine, etc.

You’d need a dedicated team who can deliver in a timely manner. Perhaps set a development time of 18 months for a game.

But couldn’t this community put together a Kickstarter project?

If such a thing were to materialize, I’d like to do writing/design work.

Might I humbly — or even not-so-humbly — suggest that just such an opportunity is now staring us all in the face?

I think this project is worth supporting. Indiegogo — which is the non-US Kickstarter portal — offers a “flexible funding” campaign option, which the Ashes team have opted for. That means that they don’t — strictly speaking — have to reach their goal of $100,000 in order to receive funding; they will receive whatever funds they have amassed after their 30 days time out. It’s my earnest hope that they can hit the limit they’ve set for themselves, but it’s nice to know that even if they don’t, they won’t get nothing. I’ll be contributing to the campaign this weekend, and I’d encourage anyone who is serious about the above to do likewise. There will be an Ashes widget on the sidebar until their campaign times out in a month.

And…heck. If you think you might be able to help out, why not drop the team a note and volunteer your services to them?