Ascend is a reverse roguelike in which you control a hero who has already descended deep into a dungeon and completed his quest, the only problem is that on the way out he’ll randomly lose his powers and abilities – from powerful spells to the ability to hold his bladder!
In Ascend you start the game fully levelled up and able to use a variety of powerful abilities, such as summoning hordes of allies or powerful blasts of energy to dispatch your enemies with ease. However, each time you find the exit of a level and ascend up to the next one then you have to choose one of your abilities to lose from four randomly selected ones.
There’s a lot of different types of abilities to lose, that range from just downgrading a spell a little to forgetting the memory of your childhood or your ability to read. Downgrading your spells makes things a little tougher, but losing memories or basic skills can have some humorous and drastic consequences – such as having episodic breaks as you lose motivation or all the text being jumbled up and unreadable.
It’s an interesting concept, that finds a unique way of making a game more challenging as you progress without just increasing the power of the enemies. You’ll really have to give up a lot to escape this dungeon!
Download the Ascend Prototype Here (Windows & Mac)