Ascent Preview | Taken for a Quickie

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Continuing our look at hot new games to look forward to from EGX, we got some time to go on a journey with Ascent a Baltic folklore-inspired, narrative exploration game...

by James Michael Parry

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@james_parry

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First things first, you say “narrative exploration” and I hear “walking simulator” – am I close?
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Not at all in fact. There's an element of that vibe, in the sense that the gameplay experience of Ascent is quite chilled, but it's a third-person, character driven affair rather than something that feels like aimless exploration.

In the section we played, you are a pilgrim who has been trusted with the last flame in what has become a very dark world, and you have to climb a nearby mountain to resurrect the beacon at the summit and restore the light to both the village, and the world.

It sounds very dramatic, and dark, but is it...fun?

Despite the weight of the task on this pilgrim’s shoulders, in the gameplay the character takes it all in his stride, talking to NPCs and gradually getting to grips with the village.

You’ll quickly notice a bunch of bees that have been scared from their hives by the ghosts of other bees which have perished, and you’ll need to lead them carefully back to their hives to open the path to the mountain.​

Amber Bear Games (l-r) - Freya Gill, Ada Lesinskaite, Dan Griffiths, Tarik Sabin

So, where did this game come from?

We were lucky enough to speak to both Freya Gill and Ada Lesinskaite from Amber Bear Games about the title, which has been prototyped and developed as part of the graduate programme Tranzfuser.

“It’s a competition which is open to recent graduates,” explained Freya. “We applied for a grant to make the game for three months over the summer, so now we’re pushing for the next round.”

“As a team of four core people and some freelance partners we put what you can see together over about three months,” said Ada. “We also had to put together a business strategy, so it was quite a lot of work!”

That sounds pretty difficult…

“The learning curve was very steep,” said Freya. “We’ve made games as a team before at university but this was another level thanks to all the business and projection work. It was tough but really valuable.”

The team will find out if they’ve been successful in pitching their game as part of the competition, but they’ve already decided to continue developing the project either way, as they really believe in the idea, with an aim to deliver something by Q2 2023.

These guys are pretty passionate about making games then…?

I’ll just let Ada take this one:

“I just think that games are probably the best medium to convey any sort of narrative, information or even education. With Ascent we’re trying to bring the Baltic culture a little bit more into the public eye and it’s things like that that keeps me going and creating games experiences for people.”

To dive into the industry with their summer rather than just moving home and begrudgingly taking a job in retail (This sounds strangely familiar… – Ed), this team poured their time and energy into creating something really cool.

I guess I won’t be playing this on my Switch on the bus any time soon though?

Developing games is really hard work and often takes years. So far the team has thrown a huge amount of passion and creativity into the pot to get as far as they have so far, and there’s no doubt, from what we’ve seen, the idea has huge potential, just keep an eye out in the spring to see what they do next.

So there’s no need to start refreshing the Nintendo eShop page just yet – rest assured we’ll keep you posted with any updates from the team next year.

If you’d like to hear more from the team, take a look at our EGX 2022 round-up video, featuring snippets from our interview with Freya and Ada.​