Cradle of Ash

Burn the dead or they come back.

Pre-alpha footage. All video and screenshots subject to change.

You wake in a wrecked coach at the edge of Ashbrook, a company town sealed off behind a chemical-spill quarantine that nobody believes. Every resident carries something that should never have had a body. It walks. It prays. It gets back up from anything you do to it — stronger, faster, angrier — unless what is left of it burns.

Down in the hospital, in the dark under the maternity ward, something is assembling itself out of every body it has ever owned. It knows your name. It has known your name since before you were born.

One to four players, or solo. Always four survivors.

Bring up to three friends, or go in on your own. Every run puts four survivors into Ashbrook, and any seat a friend is not sitting in is taken by a companion who fights beside you, picks you up when you go down, and has opinions about all of it. A friend who joins late takes a companion's place. The campaign does not scale down politely — a body nobody had time to burn is a problem for whoever is nearest it twenty seconds later, and that might be you. Drop-in co-op over Steam; invite from your friends list.

Bloodthirsty Demon Baby Mode

Host a run and leave seats open for the other side: up to eight players can join as demons on top of the four survivors. Each one wakes as a Crawler, played in third person, somewhere around the party, and a little girl whispers in their ear what to do about it. Pick "find a match" on the title screen and you drop into whichever open run has room for the litter.

Hunt in a pack. One Crawler is a nuisance. Five coming down a corridor at once is a decision the party has to make in about a second. Stalk them, pick off the straggler, and go in together.

Get back up. Shoot a demon down and it stands up again a few seconds later, somewhere close. The only thing that keeps the litter off a survivor for good is fire.

They fight back. The survivors have guns, grenades, molotovs and a door they can shut. The demons have numbers.

Guns put them down. Only fire ends them.

The fire economy. Anything you down gets back up in a minute or two, worse than before — unless the body is burned. A lighter, a bottle, whatever you were willing to pour into it. Bottles are common. Rags are not. A half-burned body comes back as something that no longer fears fire.

They do not kill you. They take you. Get caught and you are not shot in the dark — you are grabbed, and dragged, toward wherever the noise is coming from. Fight the hold, or hope somebody comes for you. Every second you lose is a step closer to the nests.

Fire does not know whose side you are on. A molotov pool burns whatever stands in it, and it does not check the coat. Fire spreads along what you spilled, what you dropped, what you were standing on. The most dangerous thing in Ashbrook is usually the one your team lit.

Heard before seen. Every enemy in Ashbrook is heard before it is seen — direction and distance are the read of every room. Whatever is calling from the dark calls slower, and shorter, the nearer it gets. Nobody who has seen what makes the sound has come back to describe it.

The Director. No scripted jump-scare loops. A director reads your noise, your light, your fuel, and how long since you last saw something — and spends its budget where you are going, not where you were. You stop fearing the monsters and start fearing your own decisions.

Six acts. A story campaign through the suburbs, the hospital, the research levels under the campus, the flooded tunnels, the old village, and the abbey on the ridge. The documents and tapes you find tell a truth that goes back much further than the company.

The residents of Ashbrook

Carriers — Infected residents. Slow, many, murmuring prayers. They cannot climb. They drag the fallen home.

The Vessel — Nine feet tall and still carrying. She does not hunt. She keeps her distance along the route you need. What she is carrying is the question nobody in Ashbrook will answer.

The Midwife — Cannot be hurt, cannot be caught. Trails the mother with a bassinet she never sets down. Do not look inside it.

Ashbrook's water is safe. Ashbrook's air is safe.