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Review – Savant: Ascent from D-Pad Studios and Dubstep Artist SAVANT

Savant_Ascent
Review – Savant: Ascent from D-Pad Studios and Dubstep Artist SAVANT
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Platforms: Windows PC, Steam, iOS

Game Name: Savant: Ascent

Developer: D-Pad with SAVANT

Genre: Action, Arcade, Rhythm

Release Date: December 4th, 2013

Savant: Ascent – Developer Summary

A malicious orb has cast Savant out of his tower and transformed his surroundings into dangerous enemies! Dodge and shoot your way back up the tower, and blast down waves of enemies as you make your way towards the top! As you progress, you unlock CDs that not only give you new tracks to play to, but also grant you powerful new abilities!

Savant: Ascent – What We Think

Savant: Ascent is a collaboration between indie developer D-Pad Studios (makers of Owlboy) and Norwegian dubstep artist Aleksander Vinter aka SAVANT, a name he chose because he has Aspergers Syndrome. Per hisbio:

“With production, and in performance it is a gift of an extraordinary musical splinter skills. He has created over 10,000 songs from Classical to Black Metal, Dubstep and everything in between. Norwegian Grammy Award in 2009 for his first album called “Outbreak”.

In concert with his material (pun intended) D-Pad Studios has created a game that, in a lot of ways, reminds me of the old stand up cabinet arcade games. It’s challenging, stylish and unique. For people (like me) that don’t crave being beaten to a pulp, seeking instead a way to work out how to complete a level, this title is right up your alley.

Savant_Ascent

She Just Went From Suck To Blow

The game is laid out as 3 fast (and I mean fast) paced levels that are all highly challenging. After a brief explanation of the control scheme, the game drops you straight into it. I do believe my first high score was 500 points before I died. Upon completing it my new high score was 12.5mil. So essentially, I sucked bad, and then got good!

The controls are very intuitive: The A and D keys will move the player left and right. Pressing W causes you to jump from one side to the other. Using the mouse, guide the cursor to point where you want to shoot your missiles and just hold it down to go ballistic with them. Upon collecting CDs you can get a few power-ups which make you stronger and getting to the end a lot easier! In my time with the game, I only encountered one code error but as it is a beta, it still fares better than most pre-release games I have tested.

Savant_Ascent 2013-12-03 13-50-29-183

It is clean, fast and features some very funky tunes, which makes sense considering it was built with a dubstep composer from the ground up. (Shooting glowy things and making many things explode to a fat wobble bass makes you feel like a Simon Belmont on Red Bull, btw). Once you collect CDs, you can change which track you want to listen to while playing and also unlock new abilities. The music is just as fast-paced as the game so the two play off each other like nightmares on wax.

Quite Genius

To be honest, I can’t think of many bad things to say about Savant. The one downside that emerges is that the game is only three levels. There are other play modes that open up when you initially complete what is contained in the original game, but it amounts to playing the same levels over and over. Given how much I enjoyed the levels that were available, I’d love it if the devs were to release a few more.

Savant Ascent screenshot

Overall, I most enjoyed being able to load up the game and quite happily kill 10 minutes. Be warned: My intentions of only playing 10 minutes could quickly turned into 2 hours.

Savant: Ascent is a fast game, and gets a fast review. I hope my opinion will persuade you to try it, because I really had a blast!

Savant: Ascent is available via Steam.

[xrr rating=”4/5″]

Watch the Savant: Ascent trailer: