Ascended

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/9686972/]Follow "[b]First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games[/b]" for more games like this![/url][/quote] A hastily thrown-together game without much going for it. There's no story, no music, the sounds are cheap, the maps look like garbage, the physics are broken, the few puzzles I tried were not interesting. The game feels like it's still in pre-alpha - it needs a LOT of polish before I'd consider it a finished product.

This game is terrible, even for a "my first game" or student project or something. I had a bad feeling as soon as I saw that the tutorial was presented as white text on a TRON background, thus ensuring that half of it is unreadable. Those feelings were quickly validated once I made it to the first actual puzzle, my experiences within can be summarized thusly: - "oh wow that texture tiling is really sloppy, somehow very obviously tiled yet still with visible seams" - Sticking to the edge of the moving platform because the physics near them seems to be very inconsistent - Being forced through the floor and falling into the infinite void outside the map - Falling onto the death laser and respawning - Finding the moving platforms to no longer be moving, seemingly making the puzzle now impossible - Accidentally solving it anyway while ignoring the entire back half the room, by just turning around while holding the laser redirector My time with the game ended within the second puzzle, where I walked deeper into the puzzle to get a sense of what I need to do and then finding out I am softlocked, trapped inside the gate. In short, the game looks bad, plays worse, and the best credit yo…

[b]Ascended[/b] 1 Jul 22 [h1]The Game[/h1] Ascended is a 3d 1st/3rd person platformer where you manipulate mirrors and other items to advance through 16 levels. [b]Pros[/b] It runs It stops when I tell it to stop That’s about it [b]Cons[/b] There is no way other than trial and error to find out what keyboard or controller button does what The game is about lining up lasers to open stuff - you can’t see where the endpoint of the laser is which requires running back and forth to see if the laser lined up correctly with the mirror In 3rd or 1st person my avatar got in the way of seeing while trying to line up the laser Simply not fun - 2 hours of my life I won't get back [h2]The Review[/h2] Ascended is one of those games that, for me at least, is just not engaging or fun. I can forgive a lot, but when I am fighting the implementation/set-up of the game just to play the game tedium sets in. I spent 15 min just trying to figure out how to interact with the first mirror and another 15 trying to line up the 3rd mirror because the endpoint I was aiming for was outside my line of sight. That is simply not a well thought out game design - then add in the lack of any real environment…

The puzzles are OK, easy to cheese so they get solved in unintended ways... The hit detection on some death barriers and lasers makes no sense sometimes (had a fair amount of times where I died just by walking back to the level!) The final puzzle has a laser that you're supposed to reflect elsewhere, but it cuts off, making the puzzle completely impossible. The game is impossible to finish.