Life is funny sometimes- you’re just minding your own business, drifting through the mundane, when BAM! Greatness sucker punches you out of nowhere. That’s precisely what happened when I stumbled across In The Ashes by Pablo Aguilera. On the surface, it looks like another D&D-inspired TTRPG, and you’d be forgiven for walking on by. But doing that would be like ignoring a dusty lamp with a hidden genie inside. And this genie is here to grant three specific wishes: adventure, portability, and the audacity to revolutionize dungeon crawlers.
In The Ashes isn’t just a game; it’s an adventure you can bring anywhere. Plane ride? Check. Backpack trip? Easy. Hot air balloon ride? Why not! But let’s be real, portability is merely the hors d’oeuvre. The main course is the game’s ingenious design- a dungeon crawler distilled down to the fun parts.
There’s a real revolution happening here, right before your very eyes. This game does for dungeon crawlers what coffee pods did for espresso: it gives you all the flavor without the mess. Imagine playing Gloomhaven, but instead of dedicating like half your life to it, you’re done in about 12 hours total, across however many sessions you like. No complicated setups, no keeping flakey adventure partners together, and no crying over spilled components.
The game reimagines the genre by eliminating two of its most cumbersome features: the rulebook slog and the setup. The game rules are seamlessly woven right into the story itself, completely fixing one of the most daunting parts of learning a new game. Sure, you’ll learn mechanics like combat and character movement, but the experience feels organic, like learning through life rather than lecture. As for the setup, it’s all done for you. Open the book and you’re ready to play!
Let me tell you a little more detail on how the game works. I’ll try not to make it look like homework. You open the book up and you start by reading the story. There’s a wonderful prologue scene in which you learn the basics of the game. Any time you play the game AKA write in the book, it is typically a battle scene. You are presented with a hex map and an enemy. You are given 3 sets of 3 cards to start out and these are how you take your actions. You choose what cards you want in that round and can pick any, as long as they are not in the same row or column as the others chosen. Think Sudoku, but with weapons. The cards typically involve movement, attacks, and special actions. You and the enemy rotate taking actions and at the end, the page will tell you where to flip to next, based on whether you won, lost, or fulfilled specific goals.
As you continue playing, your character evolves, gaining new abilities and growing stronger. You get access to even more cards with more powerful abilities. I will not detail anything out here to avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say, the stronger abilities are really cool and a lot of fun to play around with.
Aguilera deftly avoids another pitfall of many dungeon crawlers: monotony. While Gloomhaven’s 100 scenarios can feel like a never-ending assembly line of grind, In the Ashes trims the fat and keeps you hooked. Every encounter is fresh and every upgrade is genuinely exciting. It isn’t “Are we done yet?” so much as “What happens next?”
One of the more ingenious ideas in Aguilera’s design is how it introduces luck into a static book where your only tool is a pencil. It’s a clever twist on dice. Every page’s top corner features a printed die face. To “roll” the dice, you simply flip through the pages and whatever you land on is your attack modifier. It’s tactile, it’s simple, and it’s downright inspired.
Another fun use of luck lies in your ability to memorize. The game hands you a grimoire of runes to memorize…symbols, what it does, and when to wield them. But come crunch time in an encounter, you’re no longer allowed to look at them. You must solely rely on memory, pick the one that feels right, and flip to the back of the book to see your fate. If you get it wrong, the results can be disastrous! It’s a fun interplay between strategy and self-reliance. It isn’t a game you can passively consume. It demands your attention, your memory, and your willingness to fail as part of the experience.
While most wouldn’t call this pure randomness, it adds modifiers in a much more interesting manner. It asks you to dive deeper, immerse yourself in the world, and try to understand it.
But the game isn’t just clever…it’s playful too. Throughout the book there are little hidden clues in much of the artwork that may give you hidden boons. But you have to be constantly on the lookout to spot them. I’m pretty sure I missed 90% of them, but that’s part of the charm. It’s an invitation to revisit and discover what you overlooked the first time.
And let’s talk about that really quick. You’re writing in a book, how replayable can that be? Well, per the author, you can absolutely play through a second time, with the caveat that you must choose the opposite choices throughout the game as this will lead you to fresh pages for encounters. Without playing the game, this would have made me hesitate. I don’t care to be forced to tread the path I deemed lesser. HOWEVER, having played it, the opposite choices were almost never lesser in my mind. They were just other paths, begging to be explored, that lead to alternate narratives and encounters.
That said, replayability depends on your preferences. If you’re someone who regularly finishes sprawling campaigns, this might feel too light. But if, like me, you appreciate a tighter experience that actually gets to the finish line, In The Ashes is your man. It’s not about dragging you through endless content. It’s about delivering something more focused and…dare I say…complete.
What makes this game truly revolutionary is that it doesn’t aim to be bigger or flashier than its competitors. Instead, it narrows its focus, polishing a few key ideas to perfection. It’s an argument against the idea that a game must sprawl across endless sessions to feel epic. In doing so, it opens the dungeon-crawling genre to a broader audience- those who crave narrative immersion but lack the bandwidth for traditional campaign-style games.
Now this isn’t to say the game is flawless. The game is on the easier side-perhaps too easy for some- although there are built-in rules to adjust the difficulty that I did not try. And I had a little confusion on hexes you couldn’t see because they were covered by the art (fortunately we have BGG forums). The writing itself stumbles a little and it has the occasional choppy feel. But given the fact that this is a choose-your-own-adventure style game, it is remarkably smooth.
At its core though, In The Ashes is a bold experiment in what a board game can be. It’s punchy and satisfying, leaving you wanting more, not because it’s incomplete, but because it’s so well executed. Miss out on this one, and you’re not just skipping a game- you’re passing up something genuinely fresh in the board game world. And that’s a rarity worth savoring.
Presentation
+ gorgeous book with full color art throughout
+ clear, easy to read
Getting It Played
+ zero set up time
+ solo, so you can pick it up whenever you have free time
+ easy to save progress and walk away
+/- need to be in the mood to read
Gameplay
+ crunchy decisions
+ satisfying puzzle to each encounter
+ lots of variability within each encounter
– it’s a book so it’s missing some of the tactile joys of board games
– not a true “full replayability” (though this is not a big issue for me)
– writing is good, not great
Fun Factor
+ I honestly couldn’t put it down
+ engaging story
Andy