Ascension by Gabriel Chan

Wayward spirits love the sound of sweet music! Play as a spirit guardian, performing melodies on your instrument to summon and entice ghostly spirit flames. Hit each note at the right time to increase your sacred power and multiply your score!

Controls:
WASD or Arrow Keys
Credits:
Andrew Chen
Catherine Labbe
Chan Gim
Gabriel Chan
Jiho Park
Shirley Yang
Yiwen Xu
| Itch.io | https://zihang.itch.io/ascension |
| Soundcloud | https://soundcloud.com/carte_blanche_1/sets/ascension-soundtrack-ld55? |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ascension-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 599th | 3.548⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 800th | 3.226⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1006th | 2.887⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 925th | 3.194⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 505th | 3.823⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 79th | 4.113⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 505th | 3.633⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 59🗨️ |
Gotta come back to learn the song, well done!
The artwork for this game is amazing for both the level and menu designs.
Can't forget to mention just how incredible the soundtrack is!
I will say that this is a difficult game with a lot of mastery but seeing myself get further and further into the song was very satisfying!
Overall it was very well polished, Great job!
Wonderful entry!
@sybert Thank you! We do think we could've done a better job with the balance of the game overall, I agree it is perhaps too difficult. You should try the third song, Black and White! That one is my favourite and in my opinion, the easiest.
Edit: Also very handy calibration system, I tried again and it helped a lot.
It would be nice if you could retry from -10 seconds ago, when you mess up, just to even learn the song a bit.
I was suspicious that after calibrating, I seemed to be getting 'perfect's quite far from the targets, so I tried turning my headphones off, then playing with and without audio calibration and still noticed a huge difference in my result. Is it possible there's a bug which makes the game much easier when the calibration amount is non-zero?
@oblivioncreator @typicalkin @nsadie We're glad you enjoyed the game! The difficulty is definitely something we could've done better on, it's a lot harder than we anticipated when the levels were first created but we had other focuses and didn't have time to remake the levels. Definitely something we'll keep in mind going forward.
I like the songs regardless. And the visuals are quite pleasing. Perhaps, if there was some additional hint of typing of notes (chain/simultaneous) it could've improved the experience.
Great work either way, team!
Good job.
Note: Your interpretation of the theme slightly reminds me of the idea I tried to implement for my game hahaha.