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I don't often play new games in my free time, because if it doesn't have girls, gore, or dresses, I'm not touching it, and those special qualities are hard to find in our modern gaming landscape overpopulated by Crimson Desert-type guys. Tell me I'm missing out, that I'm crazy, but I won't budge. Goat-like stubbornness makes it more special when I have a revelation, like the one I experienced just now while realizing my coworker – who has 350 hours logged in Arc Raiders – and I both immediately wishlisted The Ashen OZ on Steam.
Indie developer Ashbone Games calls The Ashen OZ a "dark fantasy action roguelite" in its Steam description, but early screenshots and gameplay make me think that's underselling it. From what I can see, The Ashen OZ is a twisted dollhouse built with the same bones as cult hits like AstralShift's Little Goody Two Shoes or American McGee's Grimm.
Ashbone Games confirms my suspicions in a Reddit post, writing in a new Reddit post that their "dark and surreal reimagining of The Wizard of Oz" is "inspired by the tone of Alice: Madness Returns" from McGee.
It also seems to take cues from OZombie, McGee's canceled proposal from 2013 for a bleak action game that would have made Dorothy liberate mindless Scarecrow minions in Emerald City. Like McGee's intentions with that project, more brooding and psychological than the technicolor dream of The Wizard of Oz (1939), Ashbone Games says The Ashen OZ features "a brand new narrative drawing from characters and lore across all 14 of L. Frank Baum's original books. You'll encounter our own twisted interpretations of characters like Pumpkinhead Jack, Mombi, Johnny Dooit, the Munchkins, and even the Mangaboos."
So it's a good sign The Ashen OZ is already inspiring the same craving in me that many of McGee's games did, like I want to go play in the mud wearing ruby red slippers. Its protagonist with a ball-jointed doll face doesn't mind the blood on her shoes, after all – she keeps swatting at cosmically carbuncled monsters with her witch's umbrella, her only weapon. She skips around broken mirrors and candlelit dinners of blue eyeballs to collect unique abilities through a dice-based upgrade system, which reminds me of Hades' Boons. To check, I'll need to play it as soon as possible.
Video games (and public domain laws) are good at consistently delivering me creative interpretations of myths, like God of War, but they haven't often ventured into the fairytales I crave the most. Especially not since the withered Victorian aesthetic in titles like The Path, Fran Bow, and The Wolf Among Us fell out of favor around the 2010s.
That said, true style never really fades, and our contemporary fascination with retro-looking horror is allowing rainstorm fantasies, lace collars, and threadbare cloaks to once again bubble up to the top of the cauldron. The Ashen OZ might have perfect timing, then, now that viral indie horror games like Welcome to Doll Town and Alisa have already got new audiences comfortable with ladies in petticoats slapping demons. In the case of The Ashen OZ, they'll also need to "dash, parry, and chain relentless combos as they carve through a dreamlike world shaped by despair and fading memories." But the petticoat stays on.
"It's still early in development, but we're striving to capture that perfect balance between nostalgia and nightmare," Ashbone Games says appropriately. The Ashen OZ doesn't have a release date, but I'd like one soon.
I really should get into the 25 best roguelike games to play in 2026.
