itch.io

Hello all! Ascent is a round-based zombie survival game, as a sort of ode to the "golden years" of Call of Duty: Zombies. Built in Unreal Engine 5.4

My team and I have been hard at work, making sure this game will be an experience to remember. However, we need to expand the team in order to fill a few more roles.

Check/Mate Studio is made up of;

Myself (Skye) - 3D modeler specializing in hard surfaces. Also about 4 years of Unreal Engine coding, both blueprint and C++, including multiplayer replication.

Lucas - Foley artist and music composer.

Hax0 - Extremely talented FPS animator.

WHAT DO WE NEED?

• UI Designer/Artist. Knowing Unreal's widget/UI system is a plus but not necessary!
• Character modeler (we're still using the mannequin for the player)
• Additional Unreal coders that are familiar with multiplayer replication, both C++ and Blueprint
• Testers (Please break my game!)

This is not a one and done project. This is just the start of a long career for Check/Mate Studio. After an early access release for this game, there will be continued development for it, as well as further projects to work on.

If interested, feel free to DM me on Discord (Skyelander) or here and we can discuss any further details.

The major update I promised finally got pushed and published a couple days ago. Please come and take a look! Lots of QoL and major updates! Thank you!

- Skye (General Development/3D Artist)

We did a major update just a couple days ago that added a LOT of polish and QoL changes. It'd be great if you came back and checked it out again! Thank you!

- Skye (General Development/3D Artist)

Thanks for the comment! We made some recent QoL changes and big updates to the game, and would love if you'd come back and check it out again! 

- Skye (General Development/3D Artist)

A recent update that overhauled a decent amount of the game got pushed 2 days ago. Highly recommend you go back and check it out again! Thanks!

- Skye (General Development/3D Artist)

Thanks for the comment! I tried to add subtitles to the video files, but that seems to be really finicky in Unreal's movie editor. I may give it another go at some point in the near future :)

As for the motion blur; I hear you. I've not looked into that sort of setting but I'd LOVE for a way to turn it off myself. It strains my eyes too much lol
- Skye (General Development/3D Artist)

Our apologies, honestly. We had another version that we were attempting to build, but we just ran into a really stupid issue that wouldn't let us build the game, so had to go with an older build. Alas, we should have a new build posted later today as a major update with several bug fixes and QoL improvements. 

- Skye

I have to say I spent way too long procrastinating other things so I could play this game more. It is REALLY GOOD. Great job!

-Nick

Thanks for the Feedback!

Ah! I knew we forgot something! We turned that on to check collisions with enemy's and forgot to turn it off lol.

We added controls on the main itch page where you click on the game icon on the submission page. We were gonna have it so it tells you when you unlock the abilities but since we forwent that part of the game we kinda forgot about adding controls to the menu.

-Nick

Thanks for your feedback and thank you for playing!

Yeah we thought about making the sword block the bolts but we couldn't figure out a way to make it feel satisfying in the time we had with the recourses we had so right now if you block (I think) it does a 75% damage decrease. When we update it that will 100% be something we look into

I encountered this bug when we were about to upload but we were already over on time so we didn't have time to fix it. You're kinda right but what happens is the enemy's don't stop attacking once they ragdoll. They basically turn invisible while their bodies ragdoll, a timer will run and when it runs out the enemy despawns. 

-Nick

Interesting game. Not sure where super powers comes in. I ended up locking myself in the first room after opening the door with the key then closing the door again.

- Skye

Love the aesthetic of this game! And the puzzles were pretty interesting.

- Skye

It's a fun enough tower defense, if a little easy. Quite short, though.

- Skye

Seems like a pretty cool concept. Couldn't really figure out how to spend the 10 coins to get the laser colors, though.

- Skye

Super duper cute game! I love the art style and the writing! Well done!

- Skye

Yeah, you needed to upload the folders next to the exe (Windows and Engine), as well as the txt files.

Clever time-stop puzzle solver. Well made!

I really enjoyed playing this one! It has a great premise, and is quite fun! My only criticism is that the animations don't particularly flow together (especially the combo attacks). But other than that, I really enjoyed how it all came together.

- Skye

There's no enemies under the bed, but if you go around the corner from where you start, into the "block city", you'll find enemies to fight. 

Some of the "glitch prevention" ideas I implemented are a bit hacky, like kill volumes surrounding the play area. I plan to streamline the game and things like that later, but this definitely is more like a tech demo for what this game could be. 

Thank you for your comment! 

- Skye

This might be my favorite game out of this jam! :D

Good amount of difficulty and kept me engrossed for easily an hour or so!

-Nick

I like this game so far. Only problem I had with it was that the wall-run would trigger as you're falling off a block when you want to jump, then it'd send you off in the wrong direction. It needs some coyote time. As well as bunny time, so that the jump input counts just before you touch the ground.

-Skye