Paths of Ashمسارات الألم
A story game about one family in a war
One life. Many roads. All of them through the war.
You are Sami, nineteen. At 3:12 one autumn night, someone pounds on your door. What happens next is up to you, and the story remembers every choice.
Year 0 · The last summer
Last summer, on the roof, on a hot night: the whole family around a plate of cold watermelon, and an old song drifting 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.
Whatever you choose, the story keeps it. Years later, when you have forgotten, it comes back: in a cell, at a checkpoint, at a wedding.
“Let me tell you about a boy named Sami. No, let me tell it again. It could have gone another way.”
The storyteller
Between the scenes
Between the big moments come the small ones: a bread queue, a checkpoint, a neighbour at the door. Swipe to choose. Every choice has a cost, so choose carefully.
Use the left and right arrow keys, or the two buttons below, to answer.
544 scenes · 22 chapters · 57 endings
Every choice splits the story. The big ones split your life for good; the small ones come back years later, when you have forgotten them. Pick a road to see where it can lead.
The Ahmad family
Every telling begins in the same house. Who is still in it at the end is up to you.
Twelve years, one street
Sami grew up here. With every year of war, the street changes, and so do its people. Who will you become?
Hands as well as hearts
More than 20 kinds of skill moments, each tied to the story: how calm you are, how hungry, how long the war has gone on. Try two of them.
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 of the story in your browser, free and with nothing to install. Then carry on in the app, where every road is open.
The whole story is free on Android, and coming soon to iPhone.
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.
Every decision you make is kept. Some come back years later, when you have forgotten them.
A timeline of every life you have told, the keepsakes and trophies you collected, and how other players chose.
Written in full in both languages, with music and sound that change with every road.
Every telling opens doors in the next. Three difficulty levels, and it plays offline.
Free on Android · iPhone soon
The whole story on your phone, free, with no ads inside the story.
Android 7 or newer. Open the file on your phone and allow installing from your browser when asked.
On a computer? Scan this with your phone to get the game there.
Questions
Yes. The whole story is free to play on Android. There are no ads inside the story.
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.
Soon. The iPhone and iPad version is on its way; Android is available now.
Yes. Play a chapter in your browser with the web demo, then carry on in the app.
Write to us
Every message is read by the developer. Need any information about the game, or have a request? Let us know.
