Death: The Ascension

Death: The Ascension is a card-based game about making a deal with Death to bring your wife back. After her death leaves you alone, Death offers to restore her life, but you must pay a price at the end of your mortal life or lose your soul. You gather resources and climb one of three paths, making decisions along the way, to prepare for that payment.

Play your cards

Each card represents an action and has four possible outcomes: Terrible, Bad, Good and Formidable. The chance of each outcome depends on the card, your resources and you. You begin with four Gold cards and one Hate card, driven by a desire to make gold, change fate and reject the world.

You can influence card chances indirectly by gathering resources associated with a card, or directly by using souls. Sacrificing a card’s chance gives you souls but results in a Terrible outcome; spending souls improves the chance of a better result, including a Formidable one. The game’s emphasis is on accumulating enough resources to pay Death, rather than simply becoming powerful for a final boss.

Manage your resources

You manage Gold, Love, Fame and Law. These resources can be exchanged for souls and back, though at very unfavorable rates. Love can become distracting, Fame concerns standing before the king, and Law reflects that no one is above it.

Choose your path

At each step of your ascent, you make a decision on one of three paths. The Pure path offers little challenge but no Hate or blood; the Opportunis path balances difficult encounters with rewards of Hate and blood; and the Corrupted path is the hardest, but provides lots of Hate and blood. Sacrificing more improves your chances.

Blood rituals

You can spend blood to perform rituals: destroy one of your desire cards, become a new self by drawing a random card from the deck, or place a Devil Bet. The bet costs blood and can bring wealth or take years from your life.

Death’s deck

Death has a separate deck based on the path you take, and its cards can burden or help you. Each Death card has three possible results: its default Intention if you take no action, a Prevention that uses a blue gem card to prevent a bad effect or amplify a good one, and an Elimination that uses a red gem card to remove the Death card from the deck. Each Death card has its own blue and red gem cards.