Ceaseless Ascent

The blocks will fall forever. Run, wall-jump and climb as high as you can before you're crushed or trapped! Unlock more levels by reaching certain heights, and collect coins to unlock hats! Later levels introduce greater challenges and new block behaviors where you will need to develop unique strategies to succeed.

Try the first three levels to master your tower climbing in the free version! 

Purchase and download the full version below!

The full version has 9 more levels and 16 more hats to unlock.

CONTROLS: 

• Keyboard: 
  • arrow keys to run, climb, and change levels in the title menu
  • the 'Z' key to jump or start a level from the menu
  • hold the 'X' key to return to the title menu

• Gamepad: 
  • direction buttons or the left joystick to run and climb and change levels in the title menu
  • the 'A' button to jump or start a level from the menu
  • hold the 'X' button to return to the title menu 
  • above button names are assuming an 'xbox' button layout.

HINT: the first level, named 'slow', is well, terribly slow, and you can 'skip' it to unlock the second level ASAP by climbing one of the side walls without wall-jumping (which will drain stamina faster). The second level has a low requirement to unlock (requiring over 50 score/height on the first level). Hold X to get back the main menu when you're ready. If you don't read this hint, the 'slow' level will just serve as a self-guided tutorial of sorts.

BORING DETAIL: the collision detection is 'forgiving', avoiding 'unfair' deaths by allowing for impossible saves. The later levels can become quite hard, and accepting the occasional 'clip-through' seemed a fair trade for keeping gameplay fun as I pushed the difficulty up. Also, this was all coded through many sporadic, too-short bits of free time, and some wackiness got baked in.

WARNING FOR MOBILE USERS: while the demo is convenient to play here on itch.io, it will take a bit of fiddling to get the full version working on mobile. It is possible, and there's some extra details in the install instructions. It involves finding a way to play the .p8.png file/cart on mobile, or hosting the html/js locally using a 'http server' app. Hopefully you mobile players see this warning before being caught surprised.