The Ascent
GameBy Neon Giant · Released Jul 29, 2021
The Ascent is a solo and co-op action RPG set in a cyberpunk world. The mega corporation that owns you and everyone, The Ascent Group, has just collapsed. Confusion and chaos ensue, security and order are in disarray, and without protection, everyone is left to fend for themselves.
Connections
Each row is a game or company named alongside The Ascent, each column a document, oldest first. A mark means that document names it. Select a row to see those documents.
About the game
- Released
- Jul 29, 2021
- Developer
- Neon Giant
- Publishers
- Krafton, Curve Digital
- Genres
- Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie
- Platforms
- Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One
- Links
- Official site, Wikipedia
Game data from IGDB.com
Documents about The Ascent
The Game Awards Reveals That Blew Up on Steam
The Game Awards serves as a significant marketing platform for the gaming industry, capable of driving measurable audience interest and immediate commercial success for featured titles.
- Following its nine-award win at The Game Awards, Expedition 33 saw daily sales volume increase by 6x, averaging 69,000 copies per day compared to its previous 12,000-copy average.
- Expedition 33 sold over 200,000 additional copies post-awards, with 76% of sales occurring on Steam, 21% on PS5, and only 3% on Xbox, suggesting Game Pass cannibalized premium sales on the latter platform.
- Total War: Warhammer 40,000 emerged as the top new-game reveal by Steam engagement, gaining 51,000 followers and demonstrating strong resonance with existing Warhammer franchise fans.
Understanding what the market wants - Stuart Dinsey from Curve Games
Curve Games, a mid-sized British indie publisher, is strategically expanding its global distribution and market presence by prioritizing direct-to-consumer pathways and emerging regional markets.
- Curve Games is bypassing traditional platform limitations by using Xsolla-powered micro-sites to implement localized payment methods and capture direct consumer data.
- The publisher is targeting the MENA region for growth, which currently represents 1.5% of its business but is identified as a high-potential market due to rising indie developer activity.
- Curve Games’ strategy for emerging markets involves moving away from Western-centric exports to focus on identifying and cultivating regional intellectual property with global appeal.
Building the World of 'The Ascent'
The development of the cyberpunk action game The Ascent demonstrates how a small team can achieve high-fidelity world-building through a strictly constrained, tech-driven production pipeline.
- The development team managed over 8,000 individual assets by utilizing a modular construction pipeline that prioritized shared texture sheets and trim sheets over traditional high-to-low poly workflows.
- Strict adherence to a three-color palette and the use of vertex colors combined with light-baked ambient occlusion kept total texture memory usage under 100MB.
- Procedural tools built in Houdini were essential for generating architectural elements like rooms and pipes, allowing a small team to populate a sprawling environment efficiently.
Plus: Analyzing a Hot Week for Steam Launches
Analysis of recent market performance on Steam reveals a significant surge in successful launches, validating the predictive utility of the Steam Hype scoring system.
- Steam launches in late July 2021 demonstrated strong commercial viability, led by Tribes of Midgard with 22,000 concurrent users, The Ascent with 10,000, and Starbase with 7,500.
- The Ascent achieved top-tier Steam best-seller status despite being simultaneously available on Xbox Game Pass, indicating that platform overlap does not necessarily cannibalize Steam revenue.
- GameDiscoverCo’s Hype scoring system, which benchmarks 2,000 points as noteworthy and 5,000 as a major contender, accurately forecasted the commercial performance of recent high-wishlist titles.
Plus: Next Week's Hype Makes an Ascent to the Starbase
Analysis of Steam Hype data and platform sales charts for late July 2021 reveals a busy release window dominated by high-profile indie and mid-tier titles.
- The Nintendo Switch digital ecosystem is shifting toward free-to-play titles like Pokémon Unite and Sky: Children of the Light, which is negatively impacting the discoverability and sales performance of new premium indie games.
- Starbase and The Ascent are the primary drivers of Steam consumer interest for late July 2021, with Starbase entering Early Access backed by 40,000 followers.
- Death’s Door achieved breakout success with a 92% positive review rate, while Cris Tales underperformed commercially due to technical instability and a $40 price point.
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.