Ashen Marches

Ashen Marches asks you to lead a small band of survivors across a scorched borderland, and it takes the role-playing part seriously. Every companion has opinions, and the choices you make in dialogue ripple into who stays with you and who walks off into the ash. I replayed the first act twice just to see how differently it could go.

Combat is turn-based and readable, which matters a lot on mobile. You can see the whole battlefield without pinching and zooming, and the tooltips explain status effects without burying you in text. The difficulty ramps fairly, and the game respects that you might play in ten-minute bursts by letting you save mid-encounter.

It's not a short game, and it doesn't pretend to be. If you want a proper RPG you can live in for a few weeks, this one earns the time.

What we liked

• Choices that genuinely change your party
• Clean turn-based combat built for touch
• Deep story that rewards a second run