Hey everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic February! 🙌

First off - a huge thank you to all our playtesters! You’ve given us so much to work with, and it’s been an absolute joy digging into your feedback. Every note, every suggestion - it’s all helping to make V2 even better. We’re tweaking, refining, and making sure the next version is something truly special.

Some of your playthrough stories have been incredible to read, and one in particular caught our eye… so much so that we turned it into an animation! Check it out:

✍️ Haven’t shared your thoughts yet? We’d love to hear from you!
Your feedback is what makes this game the best it can be, so if you’ve got thoughts, drop them into our playtesting feedback form.

As always, if you’ve got questions, hit us up in the comments or over on socials. Can’t wait to share more soon! 🙌

- Ruby ⚔️

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic January! ❄️ 

Starting this month, we’re going to start our Monthly Backer Updates on the first Tuesday of every month to keep you in the loop with all things Ashes! 🔥

Due to popular demand, we’re keeping playtesting open for another month! 🎉 More and more groups are starting to play the game together, and your feedback will be key to fine-tuning those multiplayer rules! 🙌

If you haven’t joined the playtest yet, it’s not too late! You can jump in through our previous update here: [https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/crossed-paths/ashes-a-souls-like-solo-rpg-gamebook/updates/14524].

While the multiplayer phase is still rolling, we’ve hit pause on the playtesting surveys. Once we wrap up, we’ll be sending those your way to gather your thoughts and feedback.

Our Pledge Manager is in the works, and we’re adjusting for the new tax rules and tariff changes under the new U.S. administration to keep everything smooth for you!

If you’ve got any questions, drop a comment below or hit us up on our socials! 🙌

-- Ruby

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m Ruby, the new Marketing Lead here at Crossed Paths. I’m super excited to be joining the team and keeping you in the loop with all the updates for Ashes!

Let’s jump right in:

🃏 Playtesting Round 1: We’ve officially wrapped up the first round of playtesting! A massive thank you to everyone who took part - your feedback is key to helping us make Ashes the best game it can be. We’ll be sending out playtest surveys over the next two weeks to collect your thoughts so keep your eyes peeled! 

📦 Pledge Manager Opens Mid-Feb: We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to partner with fantastic shipping providers in Canada and the US. The Pledge Manager (where we’ll gather your shipping info) is set to open in mid-February to make sure everything runs smoothly when we’re ready to ship things out! 

🎨 Behind the Scenes - Art Process: Our art team puts so much effort into the artwork for Ashes, and we wanted to give you a peek behind the curtain. Here's how Úlfrik came to life - from reference to the final piece.

💼 Welcome to the Team: Crossed Paths has also spent some time on the hiring train and is finally growing with two new team members!

2025 is already shaping up to be an amazing year for Ashes and we’ll have more updates soon - so stay tuned!

Hello Scions! Want to play some Ashes?

Download available in Backer Only Content of this Update, please view the whole update to see it.

Thanks to your patience and support, we are happy to present to you…a chunk of the final game. It’s all the items and classes but only the first dungeon boss.

As you know we have an additional 12 bosses, and an extra expansion for those who backed Throne of Luster!

This Playtest doesn't have a Character Sheet available, the reason for that is until we get feedback on core mechanic changes that may need to happen, it made more sense to leave it free for players to simply write details on paper for now then once finalised for the next playtest we can put something together that's more visual.

I want to also be clear that this game has not been tested in it's current state, for those of you who playtested the Pre-Alpha, alot is different and I do hope the new changes are something you feel comfortable with but please do feel free to always provide feedback!

We’ll be making a thread area in the Discord to log your feedback on this build but you can also email us with anything you find. You’ll have until 12AM GMT on January 18th to note any feedback.

At this stage, the feedback we're looking for is related directly to gameplay. Spelling errors, layout etc can be logged but definetly not a priority for this round of playtesting.

With all this said I wanted to make one more announcement; As a Christmas Present in our first post-playtest update we will also include a Free Expansion - Lord of the First Shiver.

This expansion will take your Scion to the lost Empire of Erstone, a frozen wasteland that was once commanded by an Eilir Lord until The Shiver froze it over for the rest of it's existence.

You will explore the deep caves to try and find the visage of this Lord and fight it for dominance over it's soul. One of the many things you need to restore Mayfalls.

I hope you enjoy a sneak peak at the final Boss Design!

That’s it! We can’t wait to see what you think of this title but more importantly, how we can improve the mechanics.

Thanks for coming on this journey with us. Thanks for being the best community.
-Ash