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A jam submission

The AscentView game page

A short atmospheric narrative experience about choices, uncertainty, and what lies beneath.
Submitted by phrenstudios — 15 hours, 54 minutes before the deadline
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Play journey

The Ascent's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Narrative#7583.5964.100
Creativity#46353.2453.700
Audio#56502.5432.900
Enjoyment#73052.3682.700
Artwork#85532.1052.400

Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
Instead of counting down time, The Ascent counts down the self where every choice brings the player closer to the end by letting go of another part of who they thought they were.

(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
Music
"ANEMOIA"
by MIDI Fusion / Rusted Music Studio / Fabien CASTEX

https://rustedstudio.itch.io/anemoia

(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
Phren

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Interesting entry, I really enjoyed the narrative and the writing style, nice atmosphere with the subtle animations and gentle background music The text-based style makes for an interesting atmosphere and also is a good idea for keeping dev time short in a jam.

One thing I think would have made it more interesting is if the dialogue and options changed slightly depending on your previous responses, this would have made for better replayability. I tried playing a second time but was a bit disappointed to find the responses were exactly the same no matter what I chose. This makes it feel less like a game and more like a digital short story / poetry.

I'm guessing this may have just been due to the time constraint though in not having the time to code branching narratives? Or was it intentional and used as part of the story, i.e. the meaning of it is that it doesn't matter what you do you'll always get the same result in the end?

Developer

Thank you, I’m really glad the writing landed!

Honestly, it was purely the time constraint — I actually wanted branching dialogue based on earlier choices, but I was traveling for most of the jam and only had about a day or less to actually write/build everything, so the “same ending regardless” ended up being more of a scope cut than a deliberate statement. Would love to go back and add real branching in a post-jam version if I get the time!

I really appreciate you playing it twice to check that’s more attention than most jam entries get! Thanks for the feedback <3

Submitted(+1)

Interesting take on the theme!

Submitted(+1)

Excellent game. I greatly enjoyed the writing, congratulations on your first game, you did amazing!

(+1)

NICE