House of Ashes Cheats and Tips
Don’t Be Afraid To Say Nothing
It’s easy to feel like you’re given two choices in most situations, but you’re actually given three! At some points, you actually only have two choices, and you may miss your precious third option.
Sometimes, doing nothing is a choice in-and-of-itself. What decisions you make are the central theme of this game, so you want to choose carefully and consider every possible angle. Letting the other person do their thing may be the best call.
You Can’t Turn Around
In the game, make sure that you have fully explored a room before you complete your next objective. In most cases, once you continue on, you’ll be pushed through the story and won’t get a chance to return to the room, so any undiscovered secrets or pictures will be inaccessible.
Occasionally, you’ll be faced with two or more paths and you won’t know which one will progress the story and which is for exploration. Or, you may be timed without knowing it and will be booted into a cutscene after a certain amount of time. In these cases, there may be nothing you can do about it, but take your time and don’t push ahead blindly before you’ve had a chance to look for secrets. Thankfully, the slow walking pace of the exploration parts will aid you in this endeavour.
The Difference Between Secrets And Pictures
This game has split up the collectables into two categories: Secrets and Pictures.
Secrets are items you’ll pick up and examine as you walk around in exploration segments. You’ll often have to turn them in your hands to find whatever the “secret” about the object is. Once you’ve found it, it’ll be added to your Secrets menu for you to review anytime, with a brief explanation of its meaning. There are 50 Secrets in total.
Pictures are always clay tablets from ancient Akkad. They depict figures doing activities, like sacrificing a goat, as subtle references to potential outcomes of your decisions. One you pick up a Picture, you’ll get what’s called a “premonition” – a short clip of a possible future. You often will have little to no idea what could cause that future; it’s meant to make you second-guess your decisions going forward. There are 13 Pictures in total.
Choosing Not To Complete Quick Time Events Is Sometimes Its Own Kind Of Choice
The parts of the game that aren’t controlled by your decisions are largely filled with quick-time events. Keep in mind as you complete those events that choosing not to do it is a kind of choice, too. It can be hard to decide in the moment, though – for you just as much for the five protagonists who you’ll control during the course of the story. Don’t feel bad if you make a bad call because it was probably inevitable once or twice.
