Review: As We Descend

descending irl

Apologies to my fans for the hiatus: I got sidetracked receiving vocational training in Xinjiang.

I would review As We Descend, but I can’t. The game is in early access, missing the final boss and all of the actual story (though the atmosphere is great). There are two factions, only one of which I enjoyed. You may or may not enjoy the Guild faction, but I have nothing to say about it.

So this is more like an As We Descend Votive-Faction Early Access Review.

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At a basic level the game is similar to Chrono Ark: each character has a gimmick and an associated card pool, you recruit characters semi-randomly throughout an individual roguelike run while also making deck modifications and gaining passive bonuses a la every roguelike deckbuilder.

The game is not as good as Chrono Ark, but that is not a reasonable standard. Instead I want to compare it to Slay the Spire. Despite not being very fun,¹ StS led to an explosion of roguelike deckbuilders because the detail-work of its design is immaculate. There’s a certain something in Slay the Spire that tells you the creator has a deep and flexible understanding of player agency in games, and how to sculpt difficulty and balance to reward it.

As We Descend Votive-Faction Early Access does not reach that standard either. But it has its own subtle perfection: the enormous number of tiny systems which actually interlock rather than each feeling like a separate incoherent minigame whose reward is fungible with those of other minigames.² Rather than an economy of potions, one can gain and spend “Favor” which is used by certain more powerful cards, creating continuity between encounters and direct interaction between combat and resource management.

Unlike in Slay the Spire, where gaining, removing, and upgrading cards occur in different context, in As We Descend they are obtained by expending the same resource, creating more interesting deckbuilding tradeoffs. Rather than the card pools being arranged to control which strategies exist, in As We Descend the squads you recruit (as well as their perks and randomized starting cards) have implications for how you interact with the game’s internal economy as a whole.

The end result is that the player is forced to create a strategy on the fly, taking chunks off different resource systems to assemble a custom game plan. It’s very difficult to make a game in which player strategies emerge organically. In this respect As We Descend is an exemplar. The flip side is that sometimes you get dogshit incompatible starting options, but that’s rare.

Beyond its unusually good system design, there’s not much to say about this game.

SHOULD YOU PLAY As We Descend?

If you like roguelike deckbuilders, then yes, but you should wait until after Early Access when there’s an actual story. As of now there’s just a militaristic underground atmosphere, horrible monsters, and a fitting art style.

1. I can already see pitchforks and torches. It’s true though.

2. E.g. the various primogem sources they had to Genshin Impact to keep people engaged, or the Dungeons system in IdleOn which ultimately rewards players with upgrades to the same core stats despite being an entirely different game.