Title: When the Embers Wake
Developer: Llamaplay
Publisher: Llamaplay
Available On: October 27, 2026
Platforms: Steam
Reviewed On: PC
When the Embers Wake is a short, third-person narrative experience by indie developer Llamaplay. With slow, relaxed gameplay and a planned runtime of just two hours, it’s a casual experience that promises to carry a heartfelt message in a humble package. Despite this, it has some hiccups that need working out.
Plot & Presentation
You play as a red panda cub following its mother as it grows up and watches the world around it change. Alongside this, an unseen narrator, Emmie, describes the on-screen gameplay as a dream she had, one where she copes with the loss of her mother. With any walking simulator, visuals are going to do a lot of heavy lifting, and in the current roughly 40-minute demo the Unity engine is put to good use. The vibrant lighting and bloom do a good job at hiding the stock assets in use. Everything about the presentation is safe and works well.
A Game With A Message
Alongside the themes of grief for a loved one, there is also a present element of environmental grief. It is an interesting and compelling choice to have a character narrate about losing their mother while on screen you are shown deforestation and industrialization, but I wish that more was done with it in the current runtime. There is potential for the two stories to blend together and create strong emotions, but right now they just clash, and neither feels strongly thought out or emotional. If nothing else, I was touched by the decision to encourage charity donations after the credits rolled.
AI Use
As disclosed in the Steam page, When the Embers Wake uses a Generative LLM for some (or all) of the in game voice acting. It is not only out of place and tonally dissonant in a game about environmental conservation, it also clashes heavily with what seems to be a personal story about coping with the loss of a loved one. In typical AI fashion, the delivery also ranges from iffy in places to just flat out bad. The full release desperately needs this replaced with real human voice work. The similarly iffy writing reeks of LLM use, and I strongly suspect the store page banner to be AI generated. This alone makes When the Embers Wake seem more like a generic Unity asset-flip cash grab than a thought-out art piece, especially when looking at the developer’s other games, which are riddled with AI assets and turned out very quickly.
Final Score
When the Embers Wake wants to have a good message. It’s short, to the point, and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. That being said, safety can do just as much harm as help when making the thousandth Unity Engine walking simulator with free assets. The use of generative AI just further exemplifies my problems, making this games $9.99 (USD) full release hard to justify.
Boss Rush Network rates When the Embers Wake two out of five stars.
Featured Image: Llamaplay
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