Five or six years ago, indie MMO players were enthralled by Ascent: The Space Game, a sci-fi sandbox made by a solo developer. It was never the prettiest MMORPG, nor did it have boatloads of players, but it was incredibly ambitious and offered systems and mechanics AAA wouldn’t dream of adding – plus it’s been one of the small number of crowdfunded MMORPGs to actually make it to launch. Over the years, both the players and income for the game had dwindled, though the developer always said there was no chance he’d close the game, no matter how little money it made. Barely more than a dozen players have logged in at peak through Steam since 2018, which was the last time there was an update of any note.
Until now, that is.
“A major new version of the Ascent game client has been released to all players after extensive testing and development with our Beta group,” a post this past week says. “The new client enhances all aspects of gameplay and ties in with the new server infrastructure to provide you with a greatly improved game experience. The visual look and feel of the game has been updated, and a large number of Quality of Life fixes and bug fixes have been made. The new client and server architecture are ready for the next phase of development, but more about that soon.”
We sure would not be sad to see this one spring back to life. Definitely check out the details on the engine upgrade and the rest of the patch, or get caught up on everything we know about the game through the years:
