Ascend

Play the role of a little girl who has to escape a dark dungeon that’s full with traps, deadly falls and strange creatures. There is no explanation to how you got there but eerie messages pop out once in a while and you’ll have to find meaning to everything as you ascend upward to a possible exit.

You begin the game next to a colored plant and slowly start wondering about until you find what could be an escape route. After a while you get to notice that everything in that place is dark, cold, bathed in shades of black and grey.

You, the flower and some strange blue flames seem to be the only patches of color that can be found in that place. Apart from the pessimism inducing visuals, Ascend features an excellently eerie soundtrack that’s amplified now and again with various sound effects. For a game of this stature and appearance, Ascend is really creepy.

In Ascend all you have to do is jump left and right until you find a way to go up and keep pushing in that direction. The title of the game is what it is for a good reason, it tells you where you need to go.

Jumping is not hard but in Ascend there will be plenty of instances that might get to you. In design, the game is simple, basic actually (not that that’s a bad thing) and for that reason you expect it to not put up much of a fight but it does. There are loads of times when this little guy will feel like precision platformer and that actually adds a bit more value to it, it makes it more worth your time.

Ascend won't dazzle you with elaborate mechanics or creative gameplay but it does manage to pull you into a strange atmosphere. It get’s more than strange at times and there are plenty of little design details that make play it a delight.