Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend feature delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "How tidy is your desktop?" and "What game will you never uninstall?"
Ashly Burch's first encounter with PC gaming was playing a Donkey Kong knockoff on a PC her mother had bought to practice typing. But the first PC game that truly resonated with her was LucasArts' Day of the Tentacle: "That was the first time I played a game that I can remember that had a narrative and comedy," she says. "It was one of those things where, when you're younger, you find something that expands your concept of what a thing can be."
Burch came to the world's attention through the online, gaming-themed sketch show Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin', before making her videogame acting debut as Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2. Since then, Burch's roles have included Chloe in Life is Strange, Parvati Holcomb in The Outer Worlds, and Aloy in Guerrilla Games' Horizon series.
More recently, Burch returned to sending-up videogames in Apple TV's game-development comedy Mythic Quest, and is currently working on her passion project I'm Happy You're Here—a YouTube comedy series that explores coping with mental health issues: "They're easy, shareable, hopefully easy to understand distillations of complicated concepts, and yeah, they're all for free on YouTube," she says. "It's something I've wanted to make for a long time."
Burch took a break from puppet psychotherapy to show me around her Steam library. We deliberated the benefits of notebooks in detective games, vetted cosy gaming's dating profiles, and discussed the secret sauce behind Slay the Spire.
What game are you currently playing?
The Incident at Galley House. I just started playing yesterday. It's brand new. I'm at that part that I think happens with every detective game, where you're like, "I have too many leads".
I'm overwhelmed. I resist having a notebook at first when I do detective games, and inevitably I have to cave and start physically writing stuff down. I did that with Blue Prince. I had a massive notebook for [that], and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, I had to have a massive notebook for that.
Why do I resist it? Is it laziness? It might be laziness. There's a part of me that's like, "It's fun that a game is complex enough that you have to keep your own personal notes." And then there's another part of me that's like, "But shouldn't that all be internal to the system?" Like, shouldn't whatever mechanism you need to track things be housed within the game? But there's no rule for that.
I love detective games. I think the first one I fell in love with was Return of the Obra Dinn. And then I think when I played Chants of Sennaar, I was like, "This is my new favourite genre." It often felt like adventure games could be a bit arbitrary. It wasn't necessarily logic that would lead you to the solution for something. It might be brute forcing, just being like, "I don't know where the fuck I'm going—rubber chicken on every single thing that I find."
When it's a good detective game, you really feel like a detective. You really are putting clues together and creating logical connections … and especially in Return of the Obra Dinn, when you get things correct, you're like, "I'm a genius".
What was the previous game you played, and is it still installed?
I just uninstalled it because I put too many hours into this game, and I can't look at the little icon anymore. It was Fields of Mistria.
I usually seek out cosy games when I'm using my brain a lot in my day-to-day, if I'm in a writer's room or I just feel like my brain is full of too much stuff. I will do a cosy game to just zone out.
What I really liked about it is that I find sometimes in cosy games, if there are romance options, there's like two characters with distinct personalities, and everyone else is the same. They might have different hobbies, but they don't fundamentally feel like different people. And I feel what Fields of Mistria did well is that—and it's not perfect, I still think there's a handful of characters that feel similar—but more than most games, I would say half the characters are distinct.
And the other thing that's interesting—this is a strange compliment—but they managed to capture the kids very, very well. There's three kids in the village, and they're maybe the most interesting.
A difficult thing with writing is that often people feel like their characters are distinct because they have certain backstories or they have certain interests, but if you don't pull those things forward and have them affect the way that they speak, the way that they act, they way that they move, they don't end up feeling different. I think often games can fall into that trap. These characters look, even just aesthetically, they look really different, so that should be enough. And it's like, well, you have to write them differently. I really liked that about Mistria
What is the oldest game (by release date) currently installed on your PC?
I mostly play on my Steam Deck. I think the oldest game currently installed on my Steam Deck is Kentucky Route Zero. Don't take my gamer card away, I never finished it. That's why it's installed, because I was looking through my library and being like, "What games do I need to give another crack at?"
I was a lot younger because [it was] 13 years ago, and I think I just couldn't latch onto the abstract David Lynch-y vibe of it. I think I was more impatient with games too back in the day. And also since 2020 I've become a reader. I didn't really read books very much before 2020. I was just so tired of looking at screens that I was like, "I have to put my eyes anywhere else."
So now, I think I've built up more patience and attention span, frankly, from reading. I am curious about how I would feel going back into Kentucky Route Zero now that my frontal lobe is completely developed.
What is the highest number of hours you have in any given game, according to Steam?
Fields of Mistria isn't as bad as I thought. Slay the Spire 2 is as bad as I thought—270 hours. I got really obsessed. I loved Slay the Spire very much, and then, actually I'm curious because I don't just play PC. I'm all over the place and I don't have my old Xbox anymore. I wonder if Spelunky would have more hours? Probably.
But yeah, it was one of those things where I would be like, "Well, I'm waiting for this thing, I'll do a run." Then there were definitely nights where I was like, "I have to get to Ascension 10" and do 10 hours or something. I would like to say that part of it is because it has co-op, and I played a lot of co-op, but I haven't played that much co-op. Most of those are singleplayer hours.
It's such a well-designed roguelike. I mean, Slay the Spire 2 is still in early access obviously, so it's not as tight necessarily as Slay the Spire 1. But it's still quite comparable. And it's so addictive too. It has this thing of the luck and skill are in perfect balance in that game. It's the consolidation of many, many different, smart choices that make it a good game. And I don't think you can point at any one main mechanic or something.
The other thing—it's such a small thing—but what I really love is that, again, it's the thing of distinct characters, you get the idea of who these people are through how they play. There are these little sprinkles of characterisation that just make it feel fuller. Like the Regent is a new character, and he's sort of a prissy, shitty king. It took me many playthroughs to realise that the throne he's sitting in is being held up by two little minions whose legs are constantly shaking because they're having trouble holding him up. That is such a fun little detail, you get so much information about who this guy is from just looking at him.
I think we can get trapped in, with games, this stoic, cool character [archetype]. There's a lot of stoic, cool, badass characters. You know what I mean? So when there's a shitty little posh prince, I'm like, "Yes! Give me more of that." I want more shitty little bitches.
What game will you never, ever uninstall?
It's probably League of Legends because I play ARAM with friends. I haven't played in a minute. I need to get back on it. But for a while that was my after-work ritual—I would get on with a few friends and we'd play a couple of games of ARAM.
I remember being in a group chat with them or something [during the pandemic] and they were like, "You should learn [League] because what the fuck else are we going to do right now?" Which I'm glad about because it's so much to learn. And truly I would not have been able to if we were not in a global pandemic and I had time to do it. I just don't like the number of characters, and they're always releasing new champions, and then you have to know how the champions work, and then you need to understand all the items, and thank god I don't have to worry about runes anymore. But now I have the hang of enough champions, and I know enough about how the other ones work, that I can hold my own.
What's a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn't live without?
This is kind of a lame answer, but I have Audacity, which is how I record my voice auditions, and I've used it now for so many years that I'm sure I could use a different program. I just don't want to because I'm not doing anything complicated.
How tidy is your desktop screen?
Quite tidy. There's a draft of something I'm working on. So on the left side of the screen, I have like two documents and Fade In. Oh, I guess this is another answer to your previous question. I don't use Final Draft for writing scripts, I use Fade In. So this is probably another program that I would never uninstall.
Final Draft is so expensive, and it feels like every two years they force you to update and then force you to buy it again or something. Fade In is like, I think when I bought it, it was like $60, and then you're done. I don't know how they make money, frankly. And it's like the same thing with Audacity, which is like I just need you for script format. That's all.
I can't handle clutter. When I start to write something, especially, the space around me has to be clean or I can't focus. And if my house gets too cluttered it's the same thing. I have to be tidy before I can do anything else. I do have OCD, so that might be why … it really calms my nervous system down.
