Ascend Factory

I actually feel bad giving this one a "not recommended" because it's obvious that the (solo?) developer put quite a bit of effort into this. It's better than anything I could ever make and if it was my project I would be immensely proud of it. But the problem is, it's more of a tech demo than a game. Automation games are my favorite genre and I've played most of them. To me, this game most closely resembles the game Infinifactory, where each level starts fresh with a new objective and constraints (resources, real-estate, etc). Each level is a small self-contained puzzle to solve. When you finish one, you start fresh on the next one, and repeat. That style is NOT my kind of automation game. I prefer something like Satisfactory where I can make an absolute mess of a spaghetti factory and continually build upon my previous work, never having to start over. That said, I gave this one an honest effort and was willing to give it a recommend if the game worked, even if it isn't my style of game. I was hoping for a cheap game in the genre to spend a few bucks on and get maybe 5 hours of play time. I would have called that a success. But the problem is, this game just doesn't function at what it's trying to be. Machines all ambiguously look the same and it's not intuitive on how to set them up. If you fight with it long enough you can make it work, but then you get to deal with an even bigger problem: the terribly buggy and not well thought-out UI. You end up getting stuck not being able to start the next level, having to close the game and start over, and then start a "new" game on the right level. If you accidentally click the earlier level (that you just finished), you get stuck and can't get out again, until you close the game and restart. It is incredibly un-intuitive and frustrating, and that's why I give it a not recommend. To me it feels like a game design class project. Where the developer knows exactly how it works and can give a step by step tech demo to their professor for a grade. Again, if it were mine, I would be incredibly proud of that. But this is not something I would feel comfortable asking people to pay me for. It suffers from serious lack of QA and play testing. I do think the foundation is there. If the developer spent some considerable time on usability, this could be something. But as it sits right now, it's not there. It's a pass for me. However, if you like Infinifactory and have superhuman levels of patience, you might actually enjoy this.

this game is genuinely really promising, i like that it's similar to Miner's Haven (if you've played Roblox), while leaning into the puzzle aspect of factory building more than pure optimization. for what this game does well, it does REALLY well. sure, the mechanics aren't explained very well and the help menu could be expanded a lot more, but that isn't the end of the world. you have plenty of control on how you handle every level and figuring out what combo works is pretty enjoyable. goals are clear and concise and unlock more stuff in every level (or outright ends it), which makes the reward very clear for what you're needing to do. ...but that's where the issues start. Ascend Factory hasn't been updated since 2024 and is extremely buggy. you can't proceed to the next level without making a completely new save which is ass-backwards and counter-intuitive, and makes the "continue" button useless. when selecting a level sometimes you just can't select it and have to relaunch. i had to beat level 3 twice as the first time it didn't even register that i beat it despite the win screen and couldn't move on to level 4. in level 4 i couldn't progress because i could only switch between floor 1 and 3 for some reason. they have a discord server but it only has three people in it and is set to application instead of invite, so i'm stuck praying that they even see that i tried to join. i would've loved to give feedback but that just wasn't an option :( i understand this is a solo passion project but this is pretty clearly abandoned to me, and that's really sad. had potential