Abyss Ascent by T90.
Abyss Ascent
Hi everyone! It is already our fifth attempt to participate in LD and just as usual, we bit more then we could chew. We wanted to create a dark, tense and atmospheric game with focus on inventory and task management while delivering the story through AI generated imagery and Visual Novel style dialogues.
QUICK NOTE: ldjam.com website has misconfigured headers, so ^ iframe with the game shows error about permissions.
You can play either on Itch (link) or by following this direct link to LDJAM CDN.


However, we managed to implement only the first two scenes of the story and basic concept for the tasks and inventory. So... Demonstration of intent, I guess.
We may try post-LD development and actually make a complete game.
Controls with mouse.





| Web Version | https://t90team.itch.io/abyss-ascent |
| Microsoft Windows | https://t90team.itch.io/abyss-ascent |
| Linux | https://t90team.itch.io/abyss-ascent |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/abyss-ascent |
Ratings
| Overall | 860th | 3.224⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 889th | 3⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 858th | 2.983⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 981th | 2.948⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 720th | 3.352⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 818th | 2.326⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 250th | 3.897⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
This has a lot of potential! I'm really impressed with how well the art works together with the gameplay. You really nailed the atmosphere! I wanted to read more!
Looking forward to the post LD patch! 😊
I would say it wasn't quite clear that I needed to click and drag to allocate people to tasks so I was a little confused for a second but got there in the end! Having done the top task first and getting story, I also got confused when it felt like nothing happened when I allocated the second couple of tasks but then I noticed the times had decreased. Some kind of audio/visual indication that something had happened would have been really nice. I feel like it's the basis for a cool mechanic and I would have loved to be able to have more challenges in managing people, tasks and making choices on what to do and what to keep in my inventory.
The characters and backgrounds are really cool and well used. The shaking of the background was a really nice way to adding some movement and making the surroundings reflect the happenings in the story. Really tiny point would be that I would have moved the characters down a bit as I felt like their head should be more central (although that's just a really tiny random point and just my preference aha).
The UI was cohesive and choice of font fit the vibe really well. I really dislike making UI so congrats on getting it all working as you intended! The icons do take away a little from the overall aesthetic of the game so I feel like using premade sprites would have been worth considering to fit better with the AI generated graphics. (I just wish you had more time to write story :P lmk when you release a book set in this world)
Overall, a great start on promising game mechanics that fit well together and have the potential to make a really interesting game! Vibes are immaculate. 10/10 atmosphere.
PS: I did not rate graphics because for me, using AI generated images is similar to using assets from somewhere. I know, it could be quite difficult to get good outcome. But I still would not compare this to really modelling or painting graphics by yourself.
- The very beginning has the character on a black background, which is fine taking into account the time constraint, but could use a little display of urgency to the player, like some sound effects or even the character dashing from side to side. The music wasn't enough to convey the idea of danger and running away from a flood, it was nicely done later in the elevator with the background shaking.
- Fixing the elevator presented 3 choices, 2 of which seemed identical, It would be nice to differentiate between them or at least give a little context before the player has to make that decision.