Ash & Rust

Ash amp Rust is a top-down ARPG in a Dark Fantasy setting with a focus on Extreme build diversity and depth
Abilities Traits and Gear interact with each other in deep ways via an elegant UI grid system Place Augment shapes into your Activated Inventory to enable them The more shapes you can fit into the inventory the more power you can amass so figuring out clever ways to piece things together can become a satisfying secondary skill
Design your own Abilities from scratch Pick from4 base types then choose your payload and Element type As you level add as many augments as you can fit to tailor your ability to your exact needs
Choose from hundreds of augment and equipment options that combine to achieve interesting and deep playstyle types For example infusing the quot Spell Weaving quot trait onto your character makes it such that each time a different ability is cast you stack up a buff Casting the same ability twice in a row resets the stacks.Visceral Satisfying Combat
Fully animation-based attacks and collider-hit physics
Abilities have animation timings cooldowns and in general require strategic intentions
quot Weighty quot movement and casts creates that satisfying crunchy combat
Master the timings of animations and attacks to dodge enemy abilities block projectiles and line up your own devastating counter-moves.Replayability
Multiple End-game Modes Each with Leaderboards Achievements and unique mechanics
Lots of loot Weapons Gear Augments Trinkets and more which all have significant impacts on your power build and playstyle
Strategic Combat Smart and strong enemies and bosses use A.I Behavior Trees to respond to your actions moving out of AoE kiting when appropriate dodging attacks etc
Gorgeous and mysterious places to explore Full PBR materials physically based rendering real-time volumetric lighting responsive foliage and terrain and other advanced technical features
Branching quests with dialogue choices Your actions and responses shape the possible paths available to you
Character customization Design the physical appearance of your character
And much more The World and Setting
You are...NOT the hero You re just an Entity plucked from the Aether to join a powerful organization You are one of many OMENs granted power and authority in exchange for servitude You fulfill the wants and desires of overlords creatures and companies the highest bidders Your missions will take you to the farthest reaches exploring wondrous places and meeting many characters Some cower at your coming but many eagerly embrace you Some things are just as they seem while others are smoke and mirrors You can amass great influence as an OMEN what mark on the world will you leave Ongoing Development
It is my plan to support and develop this game for years to come This is a passion project and I absolutely love working on it My aim is to continually add new end-game modes new loot new places new enemies and Quality of Life improvements In its current state there are still some non-core aspects that are rough around the edges Design Philosophies
Stat multipliers and large Area of Effects are kept to a MINIMUM In AnR there are no multiplicative scaling stats only additive stats many with built-in Diminishing Returns and large AoE takes heavy augment investment thus reducing character power in other areas This should help remove the main culprits of forcing all builds down certain paths to be end-game viable
No non-progression based combat systems In other words there will never be combat mechanics that are not based on utilizing your build to defeat it For example no environment traps no quests where you use some vehicle turret to defeat enemies no long-cooldown transformation forms quot apocalyptic quot mode etc In AnR your unique build means everything and I don t want to gate shoehorn your progress behind some arbitrary mechanic
New content should never obsolete old content E.g the level cap will never be raised the power range of newer items will never outscale older items etc Instead new content should generate new playstyles new types of builds and new combat strategies without making previous ones less effective