Ascent

It's been 3 months since I finished Ascent. Ascent is a personal game, because it centres on themes I'm passionate about. Without hyperbole, it contains no less than my philosophy of what I consider to be the meaning of life.

I feel I should write at least something about it before moving, finally, onto newer projects.

It had mixed reviews on Newgrounds. It was badly received by those who mistook it as being a religious game, when it is emphatically not a religious game. Actually, during development I thought my message was, if anything, too blunt. But perhaps just as the developer is in a bad position to judge the difficulty of his own game, so is he in a bad position to judge the subtlety of the point he's trying to make.

Poe's law comes in to play here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law, and I don't resent those who may have misunderstood Ascent. Nor would I change anything. If I were to simplify the game down to the point where there was no room for misunderstanding, then it would restrict its potential for interpretation; some of the best feedback for Ascent made me see its message from angles that I hadn't considered before.

I did increase the timer based on the feedback I received, but resisted calls for it to be scrapped entirely. The timer is not an arbitrary method of increasing the difficulty and longevity of the game. Its place is to serve the message.

I was pleased with the exposure Ascent got on Newgrounds. Tom liked the game enough to send it straight to the front page, bypassing the usual vetting procedure, and from there it attracted 60,000+ views and became the most popular game of that month. Very encouraging, for someone who released it on Newgrounds only as an afterthought, and expected the 400-something plays it generated on Kongregate to be about the extent of exposure it was likely to garner. In future, if it's feedback and exposure I need, Newgrounds will be the first place to consider.