Astral Ascent Preview (Steam Early Access)

Our Astral Ascent Preview has us Choosing one of the four heroes and explore the Garden, an astral prison guarded by 12 powerful mystical bosses: the Zodiacs. Challenge them with dozens of unique spells and faithful friends by your side to unfold the story of this platform roguelike with lightning-fast combat.

Astral Ascent Preview Pros:

  • Beautiful graphics.
  • 971.6MB Download size.
  • Full controller support.
  • Remote play together support.
  • Input your constellation.
  • Graphics settings – fullscreen, window size, light quality, game effects, fullscreen quality and resolution scale.
  • Can rebind controls and set controller icons.
  • 3 save slots.
  • Roguelike gameplay.
  • Characters can have an outline or no outline put on to make them more visible.
  • Fully voiced characters.
  • Opening tutorial.
  • You can dash and jump again after hitting an enemy.
  • Man is used for casting spells and is built up by using basic attacks.
  • When finding new spells you can watch a small demonstration clip of the spell in action.
  • Heal shards can be collected, have 5 on you at once to get a bonus heal when you use them.
  • Local co-op play is supported.
  • Beautiful locations.
  • The game has pixel art graphics in-game but hand-drawn art for cutscenes and conversations.
  • After finishing a room you will get a choice of where to go next with different room types holding different challenges. It will tell you the type or room, difficulty level, and reward before you select it.
  • Hack and slash combat.
  • Easy and straightforward to do combat and use/equip spells.
  • Spells will rotate as you use them.
  • Salvage unwanted spells and items for quartz.
  • Gambits are like buffs and abilities that you equip to slots for them to take effect.
  • Fast loading times.
  • Excellent smooth animations.
  • You can see the enemies’ health.
  • End of run breakdown showing unlocks, earned bankable EXP, and any rewards.
  • The Garden is your hub space where you spend time buying permanent unlocks, conversation, and more as you progress.
  • The stone altar allows you to choose one stone and will add a bonus to either your health, damage, or attack speed.
  • Every run is randomized.
  • Earn keys from fight rooms and use them to open chests for more loot!
  • Environmental elements like hitting certain plants can cause a fireball-type attack to come out and hit enemies.
  • Quartz is a currency used and lost in runs, you spend it on the gear in shops.
  • Rooms will get progressively harder as you go on a run.
  • Rooms get bigger and have multiple routes or secrets to find like altars and chests.
  • There will be 12 rooms to go through, the final one is always a boss fight.
  • U lock new spells and abilities as you play.
  • Devil May Cry levels of combat speed.

Astral Ascent Preview Cons:

  • The tutorial especially is very stop-start.
  • Slow starter.
  • No Steam achievements.
  • Combat takes some getting used to especially dodging and jumping around.
  • The tutorial is very very basic.
  • Can be hard to see enemies.
  • A lot to take in.
  • Gets very reflex-heavy.

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Astral Ascent:

Official website.

Developer: Hibernian Workshop 

Publisher: Hibernian Workshop 

Store Links – 

Steam Early Access

Jim Smale

Gaming since the Atari 2600, I enjoy the weirdness in games counting Densha De Go and RC De Go as my favourite titles of all time. I prefer gaming of old where buying games from a shop was a thing, Being social in person was a thing. Join me as I attempt to adapt to this new digital age!