Death: The Ascension

Update: After a few ascensions, I have a better idea now how the mechanics and concepts fit into this creative new game developed by a very friendly and responsive indie-developer who has updated the game in quick response to suggestions on the discussion forum. https://youtu.be/44Fzz7bToSo What is it? I would describe Death: The Ascension as a card/puzzle life-choice simulator in which you aim to optimize your chances of a successful ascension by manipulating event probabilities. It has a deck-building type of mechanic in which you add cards to your deck, but the deck is not a draw-deck. Cards in your “deck” influence the chances of drawing cards into the player’s five card hand from an infinite pool. In other words, if you have only one card in your "deck", you have a 100% chance of drawing five cards of that type. You are playing cards against Death as your opponent. Death has their own deck that has similar draw mechanics, but only draws one card per turn. Each turn one card from each deck is played with four possible events dictated by the player’s card with varying probabilities for each event known ahead of time. Card Play Mechanics: Unlike most deck builders, cards are not purchased with resources. After each turn (contract), there is an outcome based on probabilities that the player can influence strategically. The events are in two layers of hierarchy. First probability is whether the outcome is a "success" or "fail". "Success" outcomes then divide into "formidable" (best) or just "good" events. "Fail" results divide into either "bad" or "terrible" events. Therefore, each player card has four possible events that can be created from a single card. How these probabilities are controlled is based on the quantity of the various resources accumulated at the time. Each card's four possible results (events) are unique to that card and have thematic names that must be learned by the player because influencing these events is how the player controls his deck. After the contract with death is signed, the resulting outcome is shown as an event card on the table with its unique name. Event cards are not added to your deck, but the player will be presented with three cards after the contract is burned from that event and must choose one to add to their deck. These three cards are always the same whenever that particular event is created by any card. Death's deck is also influenced by the events. Death's deck mechanics must be observed and learned by the player as it is not shown to the player. Death cards do have visible effects that are not based on the events which are shown on the face of the card. These card effects can be countered only by finding the matching player cards that are color aligned to either cancel the effect for that turn only (blue) or to remove the card entirely from Death's deck (red). This alignment information must be learned by observing how your hand and deck cards change color dynamically after a death card is played to the table. Resources: Souls are the key to the end game god gamble. Souls are acquired by taking more of a chance at failure by incrementally lowering the baseline chances of success for each card play contract. Choosing cards with the highest chance of success increase chances to successfully gamble for souls. Gold, Love, Fame, Law, Hate, Time, and Souls can be used to 1.) Influence probabilities of player card events to bias them to your strategy 2.) Perform rituals to exchange card types from your deck directly to your hand, convert resources to other resource types, etc. There is also a random quantity of resources unique to each game that must be used as final payment that Death demands as a prerequisite to an ascension attempt/gamble. Blood is a unique resource gained by the ethical choices made every three turns when presented an encounter. You can influence this even more by choosing from three different levels of corruption for your character. More corruption will result in higher resource penalties, but more blood money and hate are the reward. Law is also a unique resource that is quantified in the game as a direct result from certain types of events. Law represents the degree to which justice wants you behind bars. You must make choices during an encounter with the law that can negatively impact your progress to accumulate resources. Time is a resource that can be impacted positively or negatively by events by impacting the number of turns left in the game. End Game: The endgame is interesting and unique. I will not spoil too much, but it is designed to give replay value by having successively increasing win conditions and includes probability and gambling. There is a mysterious puzzle aspect to the game where you may choose to answer questions posed by Death in order to take a “chance” at a higher level of ascension during the ultimate end game gamble. Conclusion: First let me tell you why I like abstract card games with a theme. They free up my brain’s limited bandwidth enough to allow my imagination to crunch on its own invented stories. I can’t tell you how well the game play is balanced or fine-tuned from a skill vs. luck standpoint. However, I found that each game length was just the right and challenged me to make careful choices and study the events necessary to manipulate them carefully. This, in turn, led to a sense of my own story with ethical choices and corruption by my own hands. I found the game very enjoyable from a thematic and creative card play perspective with interesting probability influencing ideas. The artwork, color palette, and music are well done. The colors and art style are bold, moody, and eye-catching. More polish would benefit the User Interface screens in a few areas, but I eventually learned how each worked. There is a lot of English translation issues throughout the game if that bothers you, but they reminded me that this game was developed by a single person’s efforts with a creative goal and vision for his game. ... Original Review: This game has style, I enjoy the art and music very much. The colors are bold and evocative. The concept of controlling chance in multiple and interesting ways is intriguing. There are language translation issues, but I don't mind as it adds to the mystery. The tutorial could be improved, and I found it more confusing to play in "future" mode that was recommended for new players which has most of the tools locked in the beginning. For example, I didn't understand card plays could result in losing turns as well as resources. ...more to come has I continue to figure out how to play.

Difficult card game + mechanics + unique = How long can you survive against death? Manage $, love, fame, law and other mechanics. What will you sacrifice for another turn of life? Death awaits all. [h1]Follow our curator for similar games[/h1] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35180752-3-point-play/

Certainly not for everyone, confusing at first, but has plenty of unique mechanics after you get past the learning curve

A ton of style. Interesting card-based and resource management game. The the developer clearly wants to try new things but did not cut any corners along the way - hand-drawn art, music, game design right up front. Expressive work, really really nice

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game! Way too hard. The chances are pretty much stacked against you... and if you slip in a hole once you constantly get punished for it. Sad because the concept is interesting.

A horrible experience. Avoid at all costs. The game is full of confusion, and neither the tutorial or the video on YouTube give you a real clue what to do. I found a few things out my guessing, bur example at one point it said I had to click the blue skull to advance, and there wasn't one, only a red one, and clicking on that did nothing. Turning out that despite the instructions, I had to scroll up to see new options, (no skills) to click on. Even on the easiest of settings it is brutally hard. You died if you have a shortage of one of the vital resources, but only sometimes as I have gone turns with negative cash and not died, sometimes. The last game I played I died three times in five cards, with no chance or opportunity that I could find or understand to even try to get the resource I needed! And this was on the easiest setting. The random factor seems way out of wack as well. You can change the odds with the use of the red (negative?) gem and earn a soul or souls, or the green (positive?) gem at the cost of a soul or souls. More often than not though, I pick the red gem, and the chance of a good outcome goes up? Bizarre. And while unexpected outcomes are always possible when dealing with random outcomes, would have a chance for a good outcome over 75% and get the bad result most of the time. And apparently the best results require to risk a very bad outcome, assassinating or murdering people, and I never once succeeded at trying that. Apparently trying to be a good person isn't an option. Okay for some, I like the option. What can I say. Only forty one minutes in and I am already getting repeat random events, which is sad. As random events are a major part of the game, there really needs to be some way to make repeats less common. And oddly enough, for a story based on a man who loved his wife so much he risked his eternal soul to bring her back, I keep finding myself marrying other women, what the heck is that? Rarely have I been so one sides on my opinion of a game, but I found no redeeming features in this one.

Lovely Art and User Interface No Performance Issues

This is a very bad game even for 5 bucks

Good alternative to all the card battler games out there. Instead of PvP or player vs AI, you're fighting entroy (Death) gradually wearing you away every round. You play cards to try and stay alive so you can ascend the ladder, which then gives you more choices to make with regards to your resources. A really interesting game and a great deal (especially if you find it on sale)

Pretty fun game. Not as hard as some other reviews make it out to be, it does require a decent dose of luck, though. There are some typos, which is less ideal. But nice game overall.