Hello! We meet again, one last time!

The storms have settled, the fires have been smothered, make-up applied to bring you all an amazing release of Ascencion²!
The last week of polish was a wild, wavering battle which luckily ended in victory.

Even tho we had quite a game already, we really felt like many QoL and polish could be done thus gave it our all one more time.
What a journey and a beautiful destination we settled with!

Let's get into the details.

The programmers: 

• A little quality of life, the player can usse DPad down to shoot below him instead of only up, left and right
• Many more special/sound effects were implemented when interacting with objects or changing stages to give more responsive and interactive gameplay
• A highscore table has been added to give a more coherent and rewarding feel to the already obtainable highscores in game, the scores are permanently saved to your local machine

• Animations/sounds to HUD have been added (like animations to the highscore whenever gaining 100 score) 

• We felt like the game screen was too empty so a "Height tracker" was implemented to give the user a clear indication of where he is and add interesting HUD

• The entire UI/HUD has been redesigned and reimplemented in a coherent theme of style, font and colour scheme!

• Jumping is made more forgiving when jumping off the side of a block
• The booster block now explodes when the player jumps on it instead of after a timer

• Post-processing effects change accordingly to the player's position (in which stage he/she is) and distance to the lava (more vignette/bloom when lava is close)

• A God mode has been implemented to traverse through the level however the player chooses (but your highscore won't be counted once God mode has been activated in a playthrough)

• The camera now drags a bit more responsively when the player ascends/descends at a rapid rate
• Space implements different tiles and at a better size (to give more graphical fidelity)
• Objects in space spawn endlessly to add more flair to the endless environment

• Music now plays in the main menu, music shifts when the player gets to the Styx stage
• Some small balancing changes have been made
• Obstacles don't spawn in falling blocks anymore
• The HUD can be controlled with a controller AFTER using mouse (wasnt the case before)
• At least 4-5 cans of bugspray have been used, our limited supply is now depleted, just enough! 

Now onto the artists:

New features:

• Added a bunch of fancy, new particle effects all throughout the stages
  • Rocket flames
  • Deadly lasers
  • Stage-dependent landing and jumping 
  • Flashy teleportations
  • Planet atmospheres in the background
  • ...

• Made the transition from styx to  space, adding a whole surface area there making it more logical and fancier to look at

• Added a cool interactive progress bar for keeping track of progress, progression and how far you have come
• Added more variety in meshes in space, now a friendly alien and a sad detached astronaut can be found drifting away there
• Added a bunch of new SFX
  • laser
  • teleportation
  • death
  • menu selections
  • ...

We were also hard at work at fixing the mood and listening to player feedback, here are the...

Redesigned features:

• A whole new, revamped HUD, and UI reflecting the game style more and changing away from the ugly blocky mess to a more warm pixel-art vibe
• Redesigned and retextured the whole character, making it fit more with the rest of the game since it felt out of place before

Not only did we revisit and add stuff, there was also a lot of polishing to do to give our game that extra push, here is what we did to add...

Extra flair and clarity:

• Added more contrast between the blocks and the background since they blended too much 
• Tweaked lava emission
• Tweaked lighting in hell setting a more dark sinister scene while taking advantage of the emission as its focal point more
• Tweaked lighting in styx giving it a brighter, enchanted and kind of mystical feel
• Tweaked post-processing to be less distracting and fitting
• Adjusted Styx level to fit game scene better, putting the focus more in the foreground while guiding the eye
  • River now flows closer
  • New cliff adding depth on the right
  • Pushed whole backside closer
  • ...

• Adjusted hell environment, adding a bit more clarity and depth

And much much more (but our short memory span is probably causing us to forget a lot of the little things)

I truly want to thank everyone who followed our process ending with this destination!
(with an additional special thank you to the person who followed and liked every week of progress)

Till we meet again, traveller!