Paths of Ashمسارات الرماد
A story game about one family in a war
One life. Many paths. All of them cross the ash.
You are Sami, nineteen. At 3:12 one autumn night, someone pounds on your door. What you do next is up to you, and the story won’t forget it.
Year 0 · The last summer
Last summer, a hot night on the roof. The whole family sits round a plate of cold watermelon while an old song drifts up from the neighbours’ radio. Baba tells how he met Mama for the hundredth time, and gets it wrong on purpose to make everyone laugh.
Nobody on the roof knows it is the last one.
Year 1 · Autumn
3:12 a.m.
Someone is pounding on the front door. The whole house is awake. Lina is crying in the next room.
Again
The pounding gets louder. Men’s voices behind the door, and a light sliding in under it.
No time to think.
You have seconds. The whole house is waiting to see what you do.
The story will remember this.
The timer starts when you see it. Choose before it runs out, or the choice is made for you.
The morning after
Across the street, a neighbour’s curtain twitches, then falls back. Someone saw everything.
The story keeps whatever you chose. Years later, when you’ve forgotten, it comes back in a cell, at a checkpoint, at a wedding.
“Let me tell you about a young man called Sami… no, let me start again. No, that’s not how it went… wait, let me remember.”
The storyteller
Between the scenes
Between the big moments there are small ones. A bread queue. A checkpoint. A neighbour at the door. Swipe to answer, and know that some of them will come back looking for you.
Use the left and right arrow keys, or the two buttons below, to answer.
668 scenes · 23 chapters · 65 endings
Big choices split your life in two for good. Small ones wait, then turn up years later when you’ve forgotten them. Pick a road to see where it can lead.
The Ahmad family
You always start in the same house. Who is still in it at the end is up to you.
Twelve years, one street
Sami grew up here. Each year of war changes the street, and the people on it. Who will you become?
Hands as well as hearts
More than 20 kinds of skill moments, and the story bends each one. A frightened hand shakes, a hungry one is slow, a long war wears everyone down. Try two.
Two of them come back to search the bedrooms. You pull Lina into the wardrobe. Through the gap: boots, and a flashlight on the floor.
Tap the heart (or press Space) while a beat is inside it. Get your pulse under 80.
Karim, in the storeroom. A torch sweeps the shelves. His hand will not stop shaking.
Your hand keeps pulling the dot away. Tilt the phone or drag to hold it in the ring. It matters most while the torch is on you.
Play a chapter in your browser, free, with nothing to install. If it grabs you, carry on in the app, where all the roads are open.
The whole story is free on Android.
Made for your phone
Play it on your phone, for five minutes or a whole night. When you come back, your story is where you left it.
Friday breakfast in the kitchen, a brother’s empty bed, the balcony over the city. You live in the family’s flat first, and then you watch the war change it.
Some tellings try to stay out of it all. Say nothing, do nothing, and the war still notices.
Carry one small thing from one telling into the next, and a page left unfinished opens, waiting for someone to finish it.
Where things happen now looks like somewhere. The ward, the schoolroom, Baba’s shop, the old bridge and the oil field are all painted.
The game keeps what you decide. Some of it comes back years later, when you’ve forgotten you ever chose.
A timeline of the lives you’ve told, the keepsakes and trophies you collected, and how other players chose.
Written in full in both languages, with music and sound that change as the road does.
Tell it again and doors open that were shut the first time. Three difficulty levels, and it plays offline.
Free for Android
The whole story on your phone, to play in full, free, and enjoy.
On a computer? Scan this with your phone to open the game on Google Play.
Questions
Yes. The whole story is free to play on Android, from the first night to every ending.
It is fiction inspired by real events. The country, its cities, leaders and factions are invented.
Players aged 16 and over. Violence is shown through its consequences, never as spectacle.
Yes. Once installed, the game plays without a connection, and your progress stays on your phone.
English and Arabic, written in both from the first line, with the Levantine dialect for everything said aloud.
Yes. Play a chapter in your browser with the web demo, then carry on in the app.
Write to us
A real person reads these. Tell us about a bug, ask about the game, or just say what you thought.
