Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 83

83: Ascendancy (PC)
Developer: The Logic Factory
Year: 1995

Everybody has their own “Ascendancy” in their ranks of favourite games. Everybody. To have one means to have a game that doesn’t really deserve a mention in any other list but your own; its a game that most people probably haven’t heard of, most people have never even played, and most people think sounds stupid upon having it described to them, often times pooh-poohing the reasons why you love that game. The fact remains though that this game is, if nothing else, an important game in your life. You can look back on it, even now, and think “dang! what a game!” even though you recognize that, really, it wasn’t that great a game. Regardless, it stays in your heart.

Ascendancy is such an easy game. Simply put, you pick a race of strange aliens, each with their own unique special abilities, you pick how hostile you want your galaxy to be – and how large – and then you set off to enter into an extra terrestrial space race to the death. Research, construction, and inter-planetary relations are key aspects to “winning” the game (if it can ever be said to be a ‘winnable’ game) as each of the other races populating the space around you will inevitably try to crush the life out of you. Sometimes with war, other times through resource collecting. And sometimes they’re just block the hell out of the only star lanes you have access to. Early in the game, that’s crippling.

The graphics are… well, from 1995. Sprites and not much else. But each race has – more or less – different looking “units” (but only in regards to space craft – factories, farms, and city buildings planet side are identical between races, as are orbital docks, guns, and the like) and are easily distinguishable. But the fun of the game isn’t in how pretty it is, its in eventually commanding an entire space empire. Once you have a fleet of the largest ships in the game, with the best guns, you basically run everything, and everyone is quick to be your friends. Its a lot of fun and sometimes overly frustrating to have to battle for ownership of a planet and, sometimes, dominion of an entire star system.

As stated, before, there are a number of races to chose from, each having their own abilities – some easily more valuable than others – and range from better space combat to faster research. And some races have a naturally one-sided disposition toward other races. The lava hippos, for example, hate everyone. But, then again, I would see things the same way, were I a lava hippo.

All in all, Ascendancy is a game that doesn’t really belong on anyone’s list. Its a cornball, space-based RTS with little skill necessary to play, but it will surprise you and give you hours of entertainment if you let it. At this point, the game is so old that its becoming more and more impossible to run it, as it is a DOS based game, and Windows 7 is really, REALLY against letting me play it, thus far. Still, with a sequel announced (FOUR YEARS AGO!) there may be a re-release of some kind. Or, more than likely, no one will remember I even mentioned it in a few weeks.

Classic Moment:
Since the game has no narrative, there really isn’t any “moment” that is universal between all playthroughs. One thing, though, that everyone experiences are “xenoarchaeological dig sites” on random planets. These grant instant research to the player if dug up. Sometimes they are worthless, but SOMEtimes you suddenly have the best gun in the game, or the best hyperdrive. On these occasions, the game becomes one-sided in a wacky way, as you don’t have the resources to build these things quickly, nor do you have ships large and/or powerful enough to really get any use out of them. In the end, it takes you 1000+ days to build a really fast, really small ship that only has a gun on it. What’s the point, you ask? Its hilarious, that’s the point.

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Added September 30, 2016
This has been ported over to Apple devices, but not to Android, which is infuriating and dumb. I’d buy this instantly, regardless of price. Ugh.