Abysmal Ascent is a platformer with roguelike elements. You play as a desperate mage, trapped deep underground and determined to escape the treacherous depths. Harness your arcane powers, overcome deadly enemies, and face off against formidable foes as you ascend through procedurally generated environments.
Can you make it to the surface?
Controls:
- X: cast spell to fly
- Y: shoot a spell
- Y + arrow up: shoot upwards a more powerful spell able to break ground
Features:
- 2 boss fights
- 3 different environments
- 6 different enemies with unique abilities
- 11 unique powerups
Acknowledgement:
Thanks to everyone in Neardy Teacher's discord for help, playtesting and feedback (Special thanks to Neardy Teachers and Fletch).
Development:
2023-11-17
- increased cooldown after level-up to prevent unintentional selection
- some powerups can be selected multiple times, giving players more choices and the possibility to avoid featherlike
- very minor increase to default mana regeneration
- corrected typos
I love the concept and the atmosphere.
I keep running out of mana, most likely because my jumps are not precise enough.
This is my record so far:
This is great! I love the colour scheme you've gone for and the simple art. The flying mechanic is a nice change from the typical endless upwards platformer.
I've made it to the first boss twice but only just realised I can shoot the yellow blocks to get in, thought I was stuck but I figured it out.
The only thing I'd say is that when picking an upgrade, maybe the confirm button could be the shooting button instead of the flying button, or you have to hold it down to confirm - I have accidentally picked the first upgrade a couple of times when I was pressing or holding x to fly.
Good game, though - simple and fun to play :)
@tinysorcerer Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. There is a short timer, which should prevent you from accidentally selecting upgrades, but it probably needs to be longer, or as you suggest, switching to another button might be even better. I will work on that. Thank you.
Gonna have to come back to this and find out more of the bosses as my stupid ass alwas dies after crabby (most of the time)! It is really well put together, my few criticisms are inside the video, but mostly comes down to:
Would love a base mana regen as you can get screwed on mana I feel. Do you do any kind of calculation like player is low on mana give orbs a bigger chance?
Flying. I know this is also locked with an upgrade, but I'd love if I could just fly away.
These are tiny things, overall I had fun with it!
Hi @Achie72,
big thanks for featuring me on your channel. The feedback is much appreciated, and I'm glad you had a good time with the game.
The game already has some default mana regeneration but it's very low. The idea was for it to be helpful in the long run instead of an immediate aid. I wanted the mana to be somewhat scarce and with that to push players towards resource management and create an additional incentive to fight enemies. I think that otherwise there is hardly any advantage to hunt down drops or engage in combat. But I have to agree with you that starting with strong mana regen might be more accessible and more fun. This might be a good foundation for a future game.
maybe have some way to skip upgrades. or a way to activate and dis-activate featherlike. featherlike can help in many situations but it can also sabotage a run. i know i can simply just, not choose it, but the game forces you too once you have all upgrades. was featherlike put into the game with the intention of making the game harder in some areas and easier in others?
Hey @xxyousdjxk, appreciate the feedback. Featherlike was intended to be a game-changing power-up that requires adjusting your gameplay to maximize its benefits. But I see that it can hinder your run, and you probably need to have "speed" or "accelerate" first for it to feel somewhat useful. I've made some updates to the game—now certain power-ups repeat in the selection, and their effects stack. This should enable you to (hopefully) bypass Featherlike for the entire run.
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