From Fifth One comes
Sunset’s Ashes, a short visual novel about Nic and Alex, as they share their memories as a couple whilst climbing a mountain together. An extremely short visual novel filled with emotion, this is probably one of the best free games on Steam.
For years, Alex has been going on climbs, and trying to get Nic to join; this climb is a chance for them to reconnect and to remember their lives together, and why this climb is so important for them.
I let this game sit in my games library for a long, long time after originally downloading it, and just simply couldn’t be bothered to sit and play it for a while. Finally, I decided to pick it up and play the game, merely to collect achievements and remove it from my game library.
Wow. I have no regrets at all.
First of all, the visuals in this game are very simple, but very beautiful. The view of the summit itself actually took my breath away, and I forgot to continue the text because I was just too busy staring at the screen. I was in utter shock. The game is so simple, but so breathtakingly beautiful for the player, and Fifth One did so amazing with this one aspect of the game.
The story line itself is very humorous. Nic and Alex are a normal couple just like everyone else, just like real people in the real world, and it’s not hard to connect to them. However, this does take a turn, very quickly, and I was not expecting it at all. I had actual tears in my eyes when this came to a close, and I was left speechless, just staring at the menu screen before opening it again to find out what had just happened.
There are only three routes you can take in this game, with short changed dialogue in between each path from start to the summit of the mountain, but it’s done beautifully. The ending is perfect as it is and definitely shouldn’t have been changed around for the different routes.
Fifth One did absolutely amazingly with this, and it’s definitely grabbed my attention; I’ll be looking out for what else they publish and looking at what they already have for sure.
4.5