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[Benjamin Rivers]

Hi all:

My previous game posting was the adventure game SNOW (post here). At this year's TO JAM event, I created a new title, The Ascent.



It's a depressing yet cute platforming game — very short, mind you, because it was originally constructed in three days — with a heavy emphasis on illustration and atmosphere.

The 1.0 release of this was on my site a while ago, but I wanted to wait for the 2.0 version before mentioning it here. The original was deemed too hard by a lot of players (which came as a shock to me); this new release features improved mechanics, a full soundtrack, and voice acting! (Oh, and maybe a secret.)

Please keep in mind that I'm no expert with Game Maker; I'm still learning a lot so there are bound to be some areas that need polish. I'd love to hear your feedback, if any of you are more experienced with Game Maker, I'd be grateful to ask some questions.

You can:
» View my games page
» Download the game directly (7.7MB Zip)

The game supports WinXP/Vista, and is, of course, best played with a gamepad.

[mountainmohawk]

I just played through the game twice. The graphics are lovely and the music is pretty good too. I'm having some trouble figuring out what the story or the message of the game is. Can you help me out?

[William Broom]

It loads, and then I get a box saying "Unexpected error occurred when running the game."

I hope you can fix this because I really loved Snow.

[Melly]

Played it, also struggling a bit with whatever message is in it.

[ChevyRay]

(which came as a shock to me)

This happens to me all the time, especially with platformers I forget how fast my reflexes are and fast I play, etc. and tend to way overshoot the bar when it comes to excusable difficulty.

Also, this looks very awesome and I am downloading it immediately.

[Xion]

It loads, and then I get a box saying "Unexpected error occurred when running the game."

same, which really makes me sad because the screens look so delicious!

[ChevyRay]

I PMed the creator to offer helping fix up the game's collisions and movement a bit. If he lets me, I'll also see if I can't figure out what's causing the unexpected error issue.


Game Maker does this sometimes. A couple testers for Cactus' upcoming game are also having this problem, and sometimes it can be really hard to figure out Game Maker and it's silliness sometimes.

[pgil]

I get the same error while loading. I'll keep trying, because the screenshots look cool 

[Iamthejuggler]

Man that really was short. Great graphics, but the actual platforming felt pretty dodgy to me. The collision detection was the main problem. But for 3 days? Very impressed.

[Benjamin Rivers]

Thanks very much for everyone's kind words. I have indeed spoken to ChevyRay about getting some help to improve the game mechanics. Thanks to everyone who struggled through and found the game enjoyable nonetheless.

To those of you asking about story clarification; I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but I'd rather hear what people's interpretations are than say my own outright. I made the game a bit vague on purpose for just this effect; I find it's more satisfying if, as a player, you get to invest a bit of yourself into the narrative.

Finally, with luck I hope to have any errors smoothed out as well. I haven't experienced anything myself, so this is all very useful. Can those of you who got errors briefly let me know (either here or via PM) what kind of system you ran the game on? Might help me notice a pattern or situation that's causing problems.

Thanks everyone! (I hope you dug the voice acting too.)

[Anthony Flack]

Didn't find it too difficult, but I thought it was perhaps a little too obvious that you were being deliberately vague...

Okay, so what do we have here? a girl wakes up in a strange basement and goes up "towards the light" to escape. We see a box marked "guns" and a message "don't go out!" on the way up. But we do go out of course. And then up the tree, which has two further messages, "we're sorry" and "forgive us". Then we get to the top, we see a shooting star, and the player... er, escapes the bounds of their material body?

It's got all the trappings of a stereotypical "art game" - the girl, the pixel art, the tinkly music, the shooting star, the ambiguous ending, the allusions to the game being a metaphor for life's journey. I'm going to assume it's using these elements sincerely and not as a parody, although we are fast approaching the point where these elements become cliche.

I guess the basement represents the baggage of the past, and the security of childhood, and climbing the tree represents the girl finding her own path through the adult world. And I guess the messages on the tree are from her parents (the only other characters mentioned) - either that, or it's an apology from the game designers? Assuming it's the parents, why are they sorry? For bringing her into a world where she must struggle to rise above life's challenges, where the only reward is to achieve your purpose and become reconciled with death, I suppose.

That's the only reading I'm really picking up from it, but it's kind of... bald.

[Benjamin Rivers]

Interesting!

I assure you, though the game is deliberately vague, a lot of that is of necessity. Only having three days to make a game (while sick, I should add) means you have to choose your battles.

I should say, though, that while you may think a lot of the game's elements are decidedly and almost comically "art game" in nature, I have made no statement as to any metaphor or intent. That, so far, has been entirely the construct of the player.

Even if you don't like the game much, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. This is the rewarding part for me.

[Anthony Flack]

I should say, though, that while you may think a lot of the game's elements are decidedly and almost comically "art game" in nature, I have made no statement as to any metaphor or intent. That, so far, has been entirely the construct of the player.

Aw, come on, that's like dropping a load of big hints and then acting all innocent. The game is practically begging to be interpreted metaphorically. And you did it like that on purpose! Don't be coy...

Nice work for three days, by the way, especially all the art.

[thegamedesigner]

I find the style of the background, especially the lower bit with the dark red clouds, very cool. I want to make a game with that now.

Pity the mad hermits living in the tree, and various characters didn't make it in.

Very cool.

[NathanielEdwards]

That took me maybe five minutes to complete, which I think ruins any message for me. I'm sure some people had a lot more trouble with the platforming (you did say that the difficulty was toned down, after all) so maybe that would help the pace a bit if I died once or twice. As it was, it seemed extremely short.

As for the message of the game, I think the problem with the game's pace would help make the message seem less... not exactly heavy-handed, but maybe just overly omnipresent. Literally half the game is spent hinting the message, though no one seems to be totally clear on what it is. I feel like it's a bit too much, when that's the situation. In a longer game, it wouldn't have seemed so overcooked.