Astral Ascent is a beautiful pixel art side scrolling roguelike. An action platformer with plenty of pickups upgrades and gorgeous backdrops.
Update: After contact with developers I was able to find an accessibility feature under the gameplay menu, which, when ticked adds a black outline around characters, enemies and interactables. This helps tremendously and wish it had been on as default.
The pixel art design I found instantly reminiscent of "Children of Morta", in that it's apparently simplicity at first glance, soon gives way to an intricate beauty hidden beneath, a beauty further enhanced when the game is in motion.
Astral ascent is the second game from independent French developers Hibernian Workshop the first entry being an underrated pixelart, side scrolling Soulslike called Dark Devotion.
Although astral Ascent is in Early Access it is already incredibly polished, the menus, dialogue art, character models, backdrops controls are all absolutely spot on.
The characters feel very responsive and perfectly weighted, there was really no acclimatization needed to be able to effortlessly dart around the screen double jumping, slashing and wielding an enormous multitude of magical attacks.
Your character has the standard double jump, Dodge and melee given out for free at the start of the game; the more random, powerful and roguelike elements come from magic ability pickups during the level.
Rather than having to juggle different magical abilities, all of your magical attacks are automatically cycled through from a collected arsenal you accumulate, change up and adapt throughout your run. You gain mana by attacking via your melee weapon and then use this accumulated mana to unleash each of your magical attacks until a full cycle of your abilities has been completed.
The game itself is no walk in the park, it is one of the more difficult side scrollers I've played in quite a while. Unfortunately a lot of this difficulty falls just outside of the "punishing but fair" moniker, simply due to design choices.
Here the games visual appeal is a double-edged sword: while on the one hand it does look incredibly beautiful in every aspect, on the other hand it is incredibly difficult to differentiate between enemies and background in some parts of the game. Although I did get somewhat used to it, I still found myself time and time again dying or taking hits to enemies I just didn't see. This is particularly prevalent in areas of the game where there is a busy backdrop and a lot happening in the foreground. (Which is quite frequently).
This is such a shame as Astral Ascent has the potential to be one of those breakout gems of the year. I really hope that the developers are able to address this problem, without losing the overall aesthetic and it should be an absolute winner.
Check it out for yourself as astral Ascent is now available on Steam in Early Access.
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