Ascendant is a game created by the folks over at Hapa Games in which you play the role of a number of different Demi-Gods trying to conquer other planes that are inhabited by the armies of your rivals.
The game is essentially a procedural-generated platforming style game in which you are able to use both melee attacks and magic attacks. The game also runs with permanent death so once you die you start all over. The art style is great and it is 
obvious the art team really took their time developing the feel of the world.
Unfortunately, that is where the positives end. In my experience, attempting to play this game I found it nearly unplayable. Using my laptop I found the controls to be clunky and found it difficult to even beat the first boss. When I attempted to hook up my PS3 controller to my laptop to play, it essentially crashed my mac*. I feel like this game demands controller use and ultimately would be more suited on a console as opposed to the PC.
Also, Ascendant has next to no instruction on how to play the game. Typically
,in the beginning of this type of game you would expect a simple tutorial displaying the different types of attacks and how to appropriately use them. I found I was thrown to the wolves immediately and only after dying a few times, did I finally figure out how to use most of the controls.
Overall, I feel this game has a lot of potential, and the art style is unique enough to draw in many potential players. I would love to play more if I didn’t find the actual gameplay to be so flawed. I hope that in future patches that the gameplay will be fixed, more controllers supported, and overall a little more help for the gamer in the beginning. I think this will bring an overall better experience to everyone who would want to play this game.
(*) – On the Steam page for the game it is noted that the game features “Partial” Controller Support.
~LastUrsa
