When it comes to fighting monsters, there’s nothing more satisfying than watching your super human avatar carve a swathe through a horde, skilfully dispatching the group as if each slain foe is a giant middle finger to the game’s attempts to stop you. As it turns out, Ascendant ticks off this checkbox with its 2D side scrolling beat ‘em up action gameplay which is as satisfyingly difficult as it is pleasant to watch, as we found out last year.

The game has you assume command of one of several demi-god creatures with the express intent to invade another world and slay its inhabitants. To what purpose or motivation you have isn’t explained, but when you’re a supercharged foe-slaying god that can travel across planes of existence sometimes context just has to stand aside and let you do your business.

Most of your time will be spent traversing the interconnected chambers of each world, with the express goal of finding the boss chamber and slaying whatever random beastie is found within. Each play through is subject to a randomly generated layout, which means you’ll probably never experience the same world composition twice. Entering a chamber locks down all exits, and the only way to continue on your merry way is to dole out a healthy dose of beat-down against the unfortunate souls that stand in your way. Interspersed between the random mob zones and the final boss area are a number of side rooms that can contain chests with new weapons, challenge zones that grant extra health or magic spells, and the occasional shop to spend any tokens you may have gathered after pounding them out of your enemies. Some of these extra zones are more useful than others though, with the shop especially proving to be the biggest waste of time. Items within the shop are incredibly inflated considering the small amount of currency tokens that do decide to drop from fallen enemies.

Luckily these extra zones are more of a distraction than a necessity, with combat taking centre stage and providing the most fun you could have slamming green alien kobold creatures into the closest surface. Every character has access to two attack types, the first being the normal attack which acts as your bread and butter go-to for fighting. This allows you to attack multiple times in quick succession, eventually whittling away your opponent’s health and making them vulnerable to your strong attack. When an enemy is weak enough, you can employ this strong attack as a finishing blow which launches them off in a direction, usually hurtling towards a wall or another enemy. It’s a simple combat flow but by not complicating things too much, there’s plenty of enemy nuance to grab your attention which requires you to think when you’re fighting. Simpler enemies will mostly just stand there and take your punishment, but progress further along and the monsters will start to become wise to your shenanigans, using shields and ranged attacks to thwart any hopes of button mashing you might have. That’s when the counter ability comes into focus. Counters allow you to completely negate an incoming attack and redirect it back towards the source, usually dealing out a powerful killing blow as a result. However, misjudge the timing on your counter and you’ll be left fully exposed to the full force of that incoming attack.

When you do finally make it to the end of a level, one of several boss monsters will greet you with their hulking bodies. Each boss requires you to do something different to take it down, and learning each one’s weakness is key to progressing. The giant monkey king for example, starts by lauding over you in his tower whilst an army of minions try to pound on you below. The tactic here is to weaken his minions and then launch them towards his wooden tower until it slowly tips his lordship out into the open, where you can begin to dole out some sweet sword based justice straight into his simian face. As boss battles go, these tend to be quite simple. The mechanics of each boss are easy to learn, and once you’ve downed the giant centipede ten times it becomes much less dangerous, and as a consequence, much less interesting. Because of the nature of the game and the repeated interaction with these bosses, they start to feel less like epic fight sequences and more like bite-sized encounters.

Ascendant feels like a game that understands what makes combat fun, and when you do get locked into combat fighting against these enemies, it just feels right. There’s a great deal of fluidity to each skirmish, and you’re expected to use every trick in the book to get by because the game won’t hold back when it comes to punishing mistakes. When you do fail – and you will – all of your progress is forever lost to the digital ether, so by incorporating these roguelike tendencies death becomes the ultimate punishment. This is going to aggravate some players, especially if you’re more into your fighting games than your roguelikes, and when you do fall it can be quite exacerbating to know that you have to fight through all of those weaker enemies again to get back to where you were.

As brawlers go, Ascendant is certainly one of the more polished entries I’ve played. The combat is satisfyingly aggressive whilst keeping things simple enough to focus on more engaging aspects like timing and reaction-based play. I would strongly advise anyone considering getting the game to make sure you have a gamepad to play on though as the fast-paced gameplay doesn’t lend itself well to a mouse and keyboard control scheme. With that said, if you enjoy fancy flourishes of sword play and the roguelike mantra of procedurally generated singular playthroughs then Ascendant is right up your alley.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Late last year I wrote a preview of Orlando-based Hapa Games’ Ascendant, a self-proclaimed ‘broguelike’. The intense brawling and harsh roguelike rules combined for a tough, but entertaining experience while playing an early build. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in November, the developers have put in a lot of work over the past few months. The fruits of their labor were recently showed off in an updated build at local indie events Indienomicon and Game Developer Night, and I had a chance to have another look at the game along with some of those changes.

One of the biggest changes to the game is the addition of multiplayer. Two players can team up to take down zealots and gods in local cooperative play. The players aren’t necessarily working together (i.e. no combo attacks) so much as they’re battling simultaneously, giving the game an old-school beat-em-up feel. After talking to the devs, there are still some decisions to be made about how to handle balancing the difficulty with two players and what to do when one of the players dies. I had mixed feelings about the multiplayer only being for local play, but the experience does tend to lend itself better to a couch session with a friend.

Cooperative multiplayer and an improved map UI are just two of the latest changes to Ascendant.

Another area of improvement is with the overall polish of the presentation. A shining example are the new boss fights. While bosses were included in the early demo, this latest build includes big baddies that require some interesting combat mechanics to take down. They are also introduced in video sequences akin to the Legend of Zelda series. I did end up fighting the same first boss over and over again during my many playthroughs (it IS a roguelike afterall), so I’m curious to see what other villains the developers have in store for us. An improved set of map views make traversing the world a bit easier to handle as well.

The game’s areas are all season-based. The Summer-based areas that I saw – but didn’t play – look very close to what the team envisioned in their concept art released during the Kickstarter campaign. Since I spent most of my play time in some aesthetically-beautiful Spring-themed areas, I can’t wait to see what the artists are going to do with the environments and enemies for the other seasons.

Let’s see some more of this.

Ascendant was originally planned for a February release, but that time frame has obviously passed. The developers are still shooting for a Spring release, possibly as soon as April. There’s still room for small improvements as evidenced by the fact that the devs are still taking in player feedback from these indie events. The game continues to look more and more promising, and the devs hope that players will see that as they push for a successful Steam Greenlight campaign. Hapa Games plans to release a new trailer soon, so stay tuned to The Indie Mine for new details about Ascendant in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: New teaser trailer released!

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In early November I had a chance to attend my first Indienomicon meeting in the Orlando, FL area. Three games were showcased at the event including a trailer for Ascendant, a unique title from local studio Hapa Games. Ascendant melds the brawler and roguelike subgenres, and also includes some platforming elements. As the titular Ascendant, the player must battle through a diverse world of monsters and fanatics to overthrow the ancient god ruling over the realm. While it’s only three months into development, you wouldn’t know it from the impressive showing this “broguelike” puts on.

As with any roguelike, this game is going to beat the player down, and I quickly and repeatedly learned that lesson. Health pickups are few and far between, there are environmental hazards to watch out for, and of course there’s a near-constant onslaught of enemies to deal with. Thankfully, the game offers a currency system (influence) so that the player can periodically purchase upgrades, and enemies will often drop treasure chests that contain attack upgrades.

There’s also a socketing system that uses upgrades called Aspects which the player can use to enhance their weapons, spells, or armor. There’s some customization allowed in that different behaviors are achieved depending on where the player chooses to slot an Aspect. Unfortunately, I really didn’t get a chance to see how this system develops over time during the demo, but as a numbers guy, I’m interested in seeing how much you can really beef up the characters.

Player customization is available through the slotting of Aspects.

I’ve played a handful of roguelikes before, so I was curious if there would be something about Ascendant to differentiate itself. Indeed there was because the brawler mechanics sucked me in. Ascendant is not the kind of game where the player can simply run in godlike and mop the floor with everyone. Enemies tend to attack in packs by surrounding the player and coming from all directions. The combat system is set up quite nicely with a variety of melee attacks, ranged spells, and the ability to dodge and parry. I was warned that there’s a bit of a learning curve, and that’s absolutely true. Button mashing will only take the player so far. It took a fair amount of dying before I really studied enemy attack patterns and reviewed the controls to learn combos. Pull off some impressive combos and you can actually convert your enemies into Followers who will aid you. Even after putting in a couple of hours I find that I’m still learning, so I’m hoping that means that I won’t eventually run into combat fatigue.

Ascendant is a visual feast, comparing favorably to the stylistic direction of games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. It also reminded me quite a bit of one of my favorite animated television series, Samurai Jack. The graphical quality of indie games is an area that often seems to lag behind development, so I was quite frankly amazed to see a game that looked like it had been in development for much longer than three months. It’s just an absolutely beautiful (albeit deadly) world that the developers have created, and I can’t wait to see more of the environments and monsters.

Beautiful landscapes like this concept art exist throughout the stylized world of Ascendant.

My experiences playing Ascendant left me with some mixed feelings. The game is punishingly hard, and success is largely dictated by the player’s familiarity and patience with the inherent conventions of each of the genres involved. The fact that I didn’t stop coming back to try again, though, is a testament to the promise that the game shows. Ascendant is slated to come out in February of next year, and the team has created a Kickstarter campaign to secure licensing for the music. The team has also readied an entry for Steam Greenlight and recently released a gameplay trailer. Keep your eyes on The Indie Mine for continuing coverage on Ascendant, and in the meantime, check out the relevant links and trailer below.

Ascendant on Kickstarter

Ascendant on Steam Greenlight

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.