{"id":31831,"date":"2026-04-17T02:13:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/?p=31831"},"modified":"2026-04-17T02:13:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:13:48","slug":"idols-of-ash-review-an-engaging-spelunking-horror-game-featuring-decisions-between-survival-and-giant-centipedes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/?p=31831","title":{"rendered":"Idols Of Ash Review: An Engaging Spelunking Horror Game Featuring Decisions Between Survival and Giant Centipedes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/idols-of-ash-review-an-engaging-spelunking-horror-game-featuring-decisions-between-survival-and-giant-centipedes.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/idols-of-ash-review-an-engaging-spelunking-horror-game-featuring-decisions-between-survival-and-giant-centipedes.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<h1>Idols of Ash Review<\/h1>\n<aside class=\"aside right\">\n<strong>Developer:<\/strong> Leafy Games<br \/>\n<strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Leafy Games<br \/>\n<strong>Release:<\/strong> April 9th, 2026<br \/>\n<strong>On:<\/strong> Windows<br \/>\n<strong>From:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/4450800\/Idols_of_Ash\/\">Steam<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/leafygames.itch.io\/idols-of-ash\">Itch.io<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>Price:<\/strong> \u00a32.12\/\u20ac2.52\/$2.39<br \/>\n<strong>Reviewed on:<\/strong> Intel Core-i7 12700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060, Windows 11<br \/>\n<\/aside>\n<p>When I think of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/games\/idols-of-ash\">Idols of Ash<\/a>, I think of seven sounds, listed here in order of deepening dreadfulness. The first and nicest sound is the clink of my silvery grapple sinking its hook, interrupting the rush of air past my ears as I fall. That&#8217;s the second, less nice sound. The third sound is a distant, tectonic groaning, disconsolate and wakeful: it could be the wind again, pushing through some unaccountably musical lungful of stone. Yeah, I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s all it is.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth sound is definitely not the wind: a squeaky, squidgy rumination, like the cooing of idle pigeons. You hear that cooing and you start running, because it generally precedes the fifth sound, the stiletto rattle of chitinous feet. When the legs are close, there&#8217;s the sixth sound, a rasping, gaping hiss, and it&#8217;s time to yeet yourself into the chasm while hurling your grapple towards the nearest jutting surface. With any luck, you will not then hear the seventh sound: the thud of your hook bouncing off the rock.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<a class=\"button video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hhyFez6TNLs\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Idols of Ash casts you as a bereaved spelunker who is trying to reach the bottom of a sunken, sandy megastructure, while avoiding the attentions of an unpredictably spawning giant centipede. You may have already <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/pillowfort.bsky.social\/post\/3mip4tihlwc2c\">encountered the centipede on social media<\/a>. It&#8217;s catnip for the reaction-farmers, a segmented, scurrying hellbeast that rivets the eye and frenzies the bladder. You spy that thing zig-zagging around a cavern roof and all thought of route-planning evaporates, as you resort to the ultimate sprint button: gravity. Your character&#8217;s health bar can handle the odd nip or plummet, but you have no means of defending yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the centipede is just the supporting act. By dint of how it hurries you along and also, how ingeniously it navigates the contours &#8211; <em>tick tick tick<\/em> &#8211; the Creature sharpens your appreciation for the megastructure itself: a kilometre&#8217;s depth of hanging archways, inverted towers, vertical pipes with carefully spaced protrusions, sloping slabs, and ashen kilns ringed by spectral vegetation. Marked from afar by gouts of green light, the kilns are both waypoints and checkpoints. Breathe in the ash and it will &#8220;remember you&#8221;, teasing out a few sentences of your character&#8217;s past.<\/p>\n<p>The world is a cancellous abstraction, like something out of NaissancE, but also a convincingly built and deteriorating place, where unrecognisable planes gather into what could almost be streets. I wonder how much of this ambient indecision is inherent to any catacomb or mausoleum, architectures built to accommodate, or entrap entities that no longer need any earthly dwelling. I&#8217;m similarly uncertain about the little limbless statues you find, huddled around hovering flames that restore your health. The statues look humanoid when upright, but they&#8217;re worryingly grublike when teetered over. Perhaps they are really the Creature&#8217;s eggs. Perhaps this isn&#8217;t a tomb, but simply a nest, with human vestiges grown to lure the unwary wanderer seeking catharsis underground.<\/p>\n<p>The story is told by way of those kiln memories and a couple of cutscenes. It&#8217;s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/idols-of-ash-review-an-engaging-spelunking-horror-game-featuring-decisions-between-survival-and-giant-centipedes.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/idols-of-ash-review-an-engaging-spelunking-horror-game-featuring-decisions-between-survival-and-giant-centipedes.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>\nWhen I think of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/games\/idols-of-ash\">Idols of Ash<\/a>, I think of seven sounds, listed here in order of deepening dreadfulness. The first and nicest sound is the clink of my silvery grapple sinking its hook, interrupting the rush of air past my ears as I fall. That&#8217;s the second, less nice sound. The third sound is a distant, tectonic groaning, disconsolate and wakeful: it could be the wind again, pushing through some unaccountably musical lungful of stone. Yeah, I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s all it is.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe fourth sound is definitely not the wind: a squeaky, squidgy rumination, like the cooing of idle pigeons. You hear that cooing and you start running, because it generally precedes the fifth sound, the stiletto rattle of chitinous feet. When the legs are close, there&#8217;s the sixth sound, a rasping, gaping hiss, and it&#8217;s time to yeet yourself into the chasm while hurling your grapple towards the nearest jutting surface. With any luck, you will not then hear the seventh sound: the thud of your hook bouncing off the rock.\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/idols-of-ash-review-a-terrific-spelunking-horror-game-that-makes-you-choose-between-a-rock-and-a-giant-centipede\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaitgames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}