Ascent
Crashed on a desolate but mysterious planet you find yourself eye to eye with an ancient civilisation. Explore the planet, find powerful upgrades, and uncover its secrets.
CONTROLS
- move ⬅️➡️
- jump ⓩ
- climb ladders ⬆️⬇️
- special moves ❎ / ⓩ
CREDITS
Created during LowResJam 2022
Design/Art/Code: Johan Peitz (@johanpeitz)
Music/Sound: Vav ( @vavmusicmagic)


Got the ending where you get 1-7/8, got the ending where you get 8/8. Is it possible to get 0/8 and is there a different ending for that?


@joealarson : "Is it possible to get 0/8 and is there a different ending for that?"
Interesting question.


@Kaius : Thank you for putting that to the test. I'm both amused and impressed that the cutscene programming by @johanp is robust enough to play the conversation before continuing with the original ending. This is clearly the "correct" program response to this (probably) unreachable game state...


Incredible game!
I especially love the music.
This really captures a mood that isn't seen often on Pico 8. Very well done


absolutely perfect.
i have a suggestion.
make a save option.
the game is too lenghty to one-shot, it would be nice to be able to save.


Great experience. I loved the mood, the music and the story.
Do you know Ayerdhal, it's a french Sci-fi author, and he wrotes a short novel entitled "Scintillements" ("Flickers" in english) which evokes the story of a human being who sacrifices himself to save extraterrestrials.


8/8 Saved; ~28m to complete.
It appears my manual dexterity isn't quite what it used to be, so I found the last challenge the most difficult because:
Regardless, this was simply marvelous Johan and Vav, and to be quite frank, the perfect length. I hope you are able to collaborate together on more things like this in the future!


This is outstanding! Did I do something wrong? I'm at this cliff where I need to jump onto an ice cube (crystal?). I have the strong arms ability, the down-jump, the vines, and the dash, which you need to make it to this point. I'm super stumped as to what I'm supposed to do from here?


Really fun exploratory game! I don't normally play Metroidvanias due to my frustration when getting lost, so I'm happy to say the map was very well-designed and helped me organically remember the areas I have not yet explored. The fork-in-the-road-type areas (especially the jungle one and the desert area) were arranged in a way that I could easily keep track of them (+ potential abilities needed) and return later. I also enjoyed how each section after earning a new ability had a demonstration for the new ability before connecting to an earlier fork-in-the-road area. For me this made exploration more of a curious discovery rather than a frustration getting-lost scenario.
I found 8/8 Spirits in 22 minutes and 30 seconds!
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I played this today and really enjoyed it. Environments are varied, platforming fun, there is a nice progression system with different abilities and even a little bit of story on top of all that. Good job!


This was great! I only got 4/8 my first play through yesterday... but I've been thinking about the game, I want to return to it and get more. I like the abilities. Movement abilities are very satisfyingly kinetic. Vine power seemed a bit underwhelming vs the others I got, but obviously necessary, and perhaps relevant to explain the ending...?


i really enjoyed this game and started speedrunning it, but i noticed the timer is very inaccurate? i beat the game with a 3:16 in-game time, and in real time it was 3:57. but on another run i beat the game slower in real time, but got a 3:10 in-game time. i highly doubt you'd want to come back to this game and update it again, but i really like the game and think the speedrun is very fun. but right now the in-game timer is just not very useful for determining the run's time unfortunately
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