Foot Hell: Ashi Wash Introduces Awful Japanese Spirit

Hell is other people's toenails. The worst feeling in the world is being woken by someone else's toenail scraping down your calf. Escaping that is 90% of why I married the sea. Perhaps Japan understands this awfulness better than any country, as evidenced by a folklore creature named the Ashiarai Yashiki. This awful filthy foot stomps into people's homes and demands they clean it (it is a talking foot, naturally). Hell. You can experience a bit of that terror in Aki Wash [official site], a wee free game about cleaning an Ashiarai Yashiki threatening to smash you. It has the very worst toenails I've ever seen in a video game.

It's a simple enough thing: an Ashiarai Yashiki hangs in your home, waggling its toes and threatening to smash your stuff if you don't clean it within three minutes. Find your shears to clip its toes (hell), spray fungal spray to clean up mushroom-sprouting gunk, grab a flyswatter to squish those flies, and use your pickaxe to chip off... I don't even want to know. That's it. Find items, point 'em in the right direction and clicking, jumping up and down to reach high-up hellspots.

It's small, slight, scrappy, and worth a look just for the spectacle of that awful foot waggling its toes with those awful toenails oh god I'm in hell.

Ashi Wash was made by a team of four for Itch's My First Game Jam: Summer Edition this month. Well, they succeeded in making one of the most horrifying things known to video games.

Grab it on Itch.

Thanks but no thanks for spotting this, Warp Door.