I sort of enjoyed it, actually, as it related to how I play under my Immersion Rules. I snagged a Post-it pad and wrote down every quest I took. Unfortunately I found out about the ' you better write quests down' thing after stumbling across in on the forums. Yes, I'm all for immersion and play that makes you work for your rewards, but why not have NPCs that give you detailed instructions on where to go and what to kill? Saying 'Go see X, he's at X' and then continuing to stand there blankly is not realistic at all. Still, why any designer - indie or not - would think that having no quest-tracker in a game is a good idea makes no sense to me. Of course this is a step or two away from the old-school Ultima - back in the day we didn't have quests in that game at all, other than requests to escort hapless citizens to some far away destination (and then murder them in the woods). The main issue with the game is that there is no quest-tracker, so you simply have to write everything down. You start the game out on a newbie island, quite literally. I have to say, though, that with a game like Ashen Empires, the surprises are well-hidden, and despite real-life migraines and technical issues (the older PC might be having death fits) that cut into my playtime, I stumbled across several of these surprises.Ĭlick past the cut and I'll tell you all about it. I've seen handfuls of games that are ' Ultima Online-like' and frankly, they were not that impressive from the beginning.

I suppose that the game is meant to reflect an 'older' time, or perhaps it was literally made during those older times, but I'm not sure I care. Luckily, I was able to move all the extra UI elements into this area.

I was excited to see the option to run the game at a higher resolution, only to be disappointed when finding that the increased size was only for the black space surrounding the main game window. If you've played Ultima Online, you'll know what I am talking about. I say cute simply because it runs in a tiny window, with tiny icons, and it's so adorable you just want to pinch its little pixels to death!. Ashen Empires by Pixel Mine is a cute game with plenty to offer.

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