(This review is in two parts, since I didn’t discover the walkthrough/strategy guide until after I wrote the first part.)
In Ascension of Limbs you play as the new proprietor of an antiques store, trying to keep the business going long enough to reach one of three goals. It’s a parser game, but it plays like a choice-based work in one important respect: It gives you a small number of verbs and nouns to use, slowly adding more as you progress further into the game. It also tracks your cash level and your mental state: If these ever drop too far then it’s game over.
Gameplay-wise, then, Ascension of Limbs delivers a resource management experience. You can search the depths of your store for new items to promote and thus increase customer interest and cash flow, you can call some of the locals to buy new items or ask for help identifying those you’ve found, or you can attempt to shore up your mind if your mental state is getting too low.
Tonally, there’s something strange — in the Lovecraftian sense — going on with Ascension of Limbs. There are hints of forbidden knowledge, some items can eat away at your mental state or cause corruption, and SEARCH/WRECK/DISCARD your mind are all at least potential verb-noun possibilities. There’s also some sort of local deity that a couple of the inhabitants of this out-of-the-way small town refer to.
Unfortunately, I didn’t discover more because I could not get very far into Ascension of Limbs. I played it five or six times, losing my mind or all my money on each try. By the final attempt I had found a fairly consistent way to keep my cash level up, but I also kept acquiring a unique item that drained my mental state. The game allows you to SEARCH MIND or PROMOTE MIND to raise your mind score, but these don’t work consistently, and I never did discover a way to counteract the mind-draining item. By the time I quit I had managed three of the game’s twelve achievements, none of which could be considered much of a success.
It looks there’s a lot more to Ascension of Limbs, and perhaps plenty of players will discover that. For me, though, figuring out its resource-management mechanics enough to survive past the early game proved to be too much of a challenge.
(Additional thoughts, a day later.)
As I was playing Ascension of Limbs yesterday I kept thinking, “I wish there was a strategy guide to this,” so that I could at least make it past the early game. Well, sure enough, there’s a walkthrough — actually a strategy guide of the kind I was hoping for! — posted on the IFComp site. I don’t know how I missed it, since it’s in plain sight. Armed with this new information, I gave Ascension of Limbs another try.
This time I was able to get much further into the game, even achieving several of the more interesting endings. There is definitely more to it than I had thought at first. It also goes in the direction that I had anticipated from the hints I had seen earlier.
I do wish I had been able to see the later parts of the game on my own, without the help from the walkthrough: The emotional impacts of the various endings would have been greater. But it appears I mostly got unlucky with my first set of playthroughs in frequently finding a mind-draining item; according to the walkthrough that’s not something you should normally have to deal with until mid-game.
Overall, I’d say Ascension of Limbs is something that I’ve not seen before: a Lovecraftian resource management game. Those are two genres I would not have thought to combine, and the result is rather interesting. If you’re a fan of either, and especially if you’re into both of them, then you should have a good time with Ascension of Limbs. Just make sure you’ve got the walkthrough/strategy guide handy if you’re struggling in the first several playthroughs. š
An Exercise for the Reader 