(The game is completed. The review contains light spoilers of the premise and an explicit spoiler for Trisha's route in the main part, and further explicit spoilers in the extra final section.)

Camp Ash is an Echo fanfiction visual novel, but the cast list is not what you'd expect. Have you ever wondered what these characters were up to: Sydney's bisexual dad Chip, pro-squatter Janice, resident every-phobic-and-ist Duke, Carl's MILF mom Trisha, Flynn's AILF aunt Miriam, Leo's HORNY bisexual dad Ernesto, and Dale Cooper (from Twin Peaks and also like one singular line in Echo but he's hot so I'll allow it)? You may have to keep wondering, but they're all here anyway!

Camp Ash, the place, is a summer camp outside Echo the group is going to work at during a 70s summer. Chip and his girlfriend Janice need the money to skip town for a new start from a meth addiction (treated pretty seriously!) and also covering up running over a certain kitty. 

After the introduction, where some minor spooky things happen and getting the chance to learn a bit about the characters (you get to pick some to focus on, which is genuinely a good choice for the pacing), it's time to choose a route. We do this through tarot cards, each meant to represent a character and Chip's relationship to them. Each route follows the structure of some variations in the common route > sex (before marriage) with the route character > someone dies > make choices through a B-movie slasher plot that lead to a bad ending and slightly better bad ending. 

Some routes are definitely better than others. The Hendricks curse of being the hot one but getting the short end of the stick is real. Trisha being The High Priestess is hardly relevant to the route, and the (sorry for the spoiler I guess) villain in it is a stalker wearing an Amicus (William Shatner) mask. But despite having a shrine to her, she is unceremoniously murked like everyone else if she's in the way to get to Chip. Duke's is maybe the strongest. Being The Judgement, it fits nicely with the themes he brings along as a major character of Echo, and it's also interesting to see how he brings out the worst in Chip. 

But the antagonistic force even in the best route kinda highlights the weird thing about Camp Ash. For a fanfic, it's just confusingly resistant to engaging with the source material. While half the group at least has something to work with, the antagonistic forces of the routes is just a collection of slasher parodies. Echo has a pretty rich mythology of evil entities to draw from, and I can think of parallels for most of the characters just off the top of my head (Socketman for Miriam, or Hendricks for Hendricks). The only real engagement is what happened to Sam as he is backseat gaming Chip. Either way, while I'd never tell anyone not to write whatever they want, I can wonder: did this even need to be an Echo fanfic instead of an original slasher? Most of the characters end up practically OCs due to little to non-existent screen time in the source material anyway.

On a practical level, there's quite a few issues. When it comes to writing, there's plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes, which I don't overly mind. But I do mind characters often forgetting what they just said - not just the common-to-FVNs type of forgetting the last scene, but even the scene they're in! Two lines ago! What's also ubiquitous is planning what to do for too many lines and then it immediately doesn't happen (I'm getting Password flashbacks). And while the art is well made with a limited but serviceable set of expressions, the programming here is, and it sounds kinda rude, honestly lazy and squanders the effectiveness of the art. It's so common for sprites to have the wrong expressions I don't understand how it's missed, especially when they're GRAVELY wrong like during horror scenes when they're smiling. My honest reaction to my girlfriend being butchered in front of me: 😏 There's also times where the butchered character's sprite lingers too long, looking at best mildly inconvenienced.

If this was just occasions of once or twice it'd be fine, shit happens, but it's to the point of permeating a majority of the tense scenes. Which is especially unfortunate, as the horror is when the writing shines. There's a scene in Miriam's route that made me regret 100% the game a bit, cause it made feel kinda ill (which is high praise, I've got a decent tolerance). Where the writing doesn't shine are the sex scenes to be honest, but at least they're equal gender rights because this was true for every character except maybe Dale and Miriam for me. 

The premise of exploring the different routes to come to some sort of conclusion was what got me interested, and I could definitely tell the order in which they got made as they get progressively more complex. I was however pretty unsatisfied with the actual conclusion, that used the routes more as a checklist rather than providing catharsis.

Do I recommend Camp Ash? A tricky question. If you're looking for something that builds on Echo, no. This is nothing like Echo in either themes or vibes. But if you'd want a campy slasher for the bisexuals and don't mind it being a bit rough around the edges, sure! 

If you do, here's my recommended route order: Janice > Dale > Trisha > Duke > Ernesto > Miriam

Thoughts I don't know where to put structurally and also very spoilers, this is for the creator mostly:

It's allegedly a horror-comedy but I unfortunately mostly laughed at the aforementioned sprite mishaps, it felt kinda low on the comedic bits. The Dale Sarah Paulson gag got me though.

Ernesto's ending seems contingent on a choice accepting Chip is bisexual (from my testing this+one selfless choice+good final choice are only needed for the "good" ending) - the other two options here are either refusal or non-committal. Not only does this come off as weird when you can be a complete asshole otherwise, but Chip is explicitly talking and thinking about liking guys beforehand.

For The World route, it seems to treat things like you're on either of the guys's route depending on who you hung out with the day prior. Dale wondered if Janice would be okay with the kiss. I didn't even get to smooch him!

Two extremely minor characters get VOICE ACTING for a few lines, which also involved the creator's apparent hatred for an otter because there was NO need for that from what I could tell 😭

Anyway, I would like to see what the creator is capable of going forward, because I did feel like they were improving throughout this experience!