Idols of Ash looks like another of the droves of low-poly first-person horror games oozing from the 21st century collective consciousness, but it's actually more of a climbing game. I meet the nameless protagonist at the mouth of a mysterious, fathomless pit. For some reason it's my objective to reach the bottom of it.
At first I start to drop down from one platform or outcrop to the next like I would in any other first-person game, or like I would down a well, or the inside of a giant tree, in a Dark Souls game. Idols of Ash reminds me a lot of FromSoft's games, especially of the recurring Miyazaki motif of dropping carefully into an abyss that seems to widen and contort the further I go. The atmosphere here is pure melancholy murk until, with the flip of a dime, it turns skin crawling.
