You have 30 seconds to save the world. That’s the elevator pitch of Ascend to Zero, a fascinating new roguelike that puts some inventive twists on proven formulas. Let me tell you, I’ve played it for a lot more than 30 seconds.
To be clear, runs in Ascend to Zero don’t literally only last 30 seconds. Your character has an ability that can stop time indefinitely. When you resume time, you deal damage to nearby enemies, and defeating certain foes can add more seconds to your clock. But 30 seconds is what you’re given from the jump, and runs play out with the explicit intention of extending that half-minute as long as you can — ideally, long enough to save the world.
Developed by Flyway Games and released July 13 for Xbox Series X and Windows PC (it’s also on Game Pass), Ascend to Zero is an isometric roguelike that mashes up a slew of obvious inspirations. It has shades of Vampire Survivors, in that you automatically attack waves of enemies and numbers go up, up, up. It has unmistakable nods to Supergiant’s oeuvre — not just obvious connections to the Hades roguelikes, but to 2014’s Transistor too, with its cyberpunk visuals and emphasis on stop-go tactical combat. And though I don’t think it’s intentional, I couldn’t help but think of Scarlet Nexus, Bandai Namco’s 2021 excellent “brain punk” action RPG.
Like Scarlet Nexus, Ascend to Zero is about the impending apocalypse. It’s set in the future, when humanity has advanced technologically by generations. One day, some plant…monster…demon…things emerge from interdimensional portals and start exploding everything. You play as a woman who’s part of a research group at an advanced laboratory; her colleagues all sacrifice themselves to push her into a time machine, with the general thrust of “only you can save us!” Thus the justification of an eternal feedback loop.
After that brief series of introductory cutscenes, the game showers you with systems and currency types. The combat is the only straightforward part: At the start of each run, you pick up a randomized weapon, and it does all the attacking for you. Ranged weapons fire at enemies from afar; melee weapons tend to deal more damage but only strike enemies when they get close to you. Some weapons only stay with you for the duration of a run; others become part of your permanent inventory, and you can equip them on the fly. There are various armor types, accessories, gadgets, and more equipment that you can slot in and out of your loadouts to fiddle with your stats (attack, defense, health, that sort of thing).
The currency — or, rather, the sheer amount of currency types, which would make the World Bank blush — is where Ascend to Zero starts getting complicated. One currency type lets you buy weapons and armor, increases how many inventory pieces you can equip at once, or temporarily upgrades stats for a single run. There’s a second currency type that unlocks various avatars (after you’ve discovered them on your runs), each of whom has a different special ability. There’s a different currency that upgrades those avatars. And a fourth currency is based entirely on the highest level you’ve attained in a run; the higher max level you attain, the more you’re able to use. (If you think I’ve bothered to learn the names of each of these moneys, you’d be mistaken.) It lets you increase what level you start your runs at and the rate at which you earn XP, thus creating a feedback loop that leads to even more leveling.
The leveling system is perhaps the most baffling component of Ascend to Zero. You start at level 1, like most games, but ascend (heh) to level 20 after defeating just a handful of enemies, then leap to level 70, then 140, then 220, then 330. It does not take long for your level to stretch well into the thousands. Functionally, these numbers aren’t any different than a game with more, uh, modest scaling. But after years of playing games benchmarked by comparatively puny-seeming numbers, it’s taken me some time to adjust to seeing such large figures splash across the screen. (Ascend to Zero tells me I’ll only beat the first biome after reaching level 20,000.)
Every facet of Ascend to Zero coalesces into one of those games that can only be described as a blissful cacophony. Lights! Sounds! Big numbers! At no point when playing Ascend to Zero can I fully explain what’s happening on the screen. But it’s fascinating and riveting and has compelled me to return to it, to track its dizzying systems, to see what I can learn and what I might be able to master. When you’re saving the world one half-minute at a time, you’ll get there eventually.
