Ascent (2020)

With the search for new fun and, most importantly, challenging games having lead me from Jump King over to Mighty Fling and now this fun little title here, Ascent is a tricky physics-based game where momentum and skilled control of it is key to fully mastering what is seemingly a simple enough physics game where you control a snowball and guide it through the oddly-shaped 'mountain' of sorts in an upwards scaling manner, yet it is deceptively hard in just how MUCH emphasis there is on building enough force to jump over tight gaps and the likes! Allow me to explain here. Since I have already made a fitting comparison from above, with Jump King being notoriously strict in it's jump-based mechanics using split-second strength levels to determine the trajectory of the jump whilst Mighty Fling is a touch more casual by enabling one to 'multi-jump' by re-aiming the ball mid-flight (albeit with reduced strength) to not only save yourself from a bad fling but also necessary for shortcuts and even a couple of the hardest obstacles near the top, Ascent puts much of the focus on a heavy, more grounded, feeling of platforming whereby it is difficult to make swift movements on the fly as a me…

Foddian with questionable and imbalanced level design, each new area you get to have maybe one or two parts that are annoying and then long sections of just holding left or right. The character also feels extremely heavy and sluggish to play with, and at multiple separate the character got stuck under a moving object with no way to actually continue moving forward other than to restart the game. The achievements are also laughable and don't respect the players' time. No one wants to play the game 150 times and this type of achievement is lazy, uninspired, and annoying. There are much better foddians out there.

Not much to say, game was surprisingly satisfying to beat. The controls and mechanics aren't too janky, though the physics seem a bit inconsistent sometimes. I also don't really understand the ice physics, though you don't really need to (save for one bit at the end of that section). As with most getting over it-likes, there's a lot of replayability and speedrun potential (despite there only being 2 buttons).

getting over it, pogostuck, etc are at least interesting to look at and the game mechanics are actually fun. this is just ♥♥♥♥

[h1] Fun little Foddian, bad achievements [/h1] I was previously the only bad review on this game because I didn't understand where to go in the first area. After getting past my skill issue, it was honestly a pretty solid Foddian game, not too long, simple mechanics, decent safety nets, with funny dialogue. ...The achievements however, are ridiculous. They require you to beat the game 150 times. As someone who beat getting over it the 50 times, that was already pretty stupid but in that game since you have so much control and can continuously work towards faster speeds, it was actually very fun, and runs only lasted like 5 minutes. In this game you're so sluggish and have so little control, replaying it a few times for better speeds might be fun, but that many? Piss off. I look forward to seeing what else Tim Kashani makes.

I hate you. Good game.