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In Foddian hell-platformer Ascending Inferno, Orpheus is a footballer and Eurydice is a football"Kick your sibling’s soul out of Hell"
“Kick your sibling’s soul out of Hell”
Image credit:Oppolyon
Image credit:Oppolyon
Being a love-drunk spannerhead, however, Orpheus couldn’t resist a quick peek at Eurydice after crossing the threshold - and the result is a timeless moral about human frailty and the specific truism that you should absolutely never date musicians, which Australian developers Oppolyon Studios appear to have totally ignored in their otherwise-redolent game about kicking your brother’s soul out of hell.
Ascending Inferno | Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Ascending Inferno | Launch Trailer
I’m writing this up partly because the press release does, indeed, call the game “Foddian”, and I love that this is a thing now. I love that Bennett Foddy’sgame-length exercise in punching you in the handshas become a genre. I love that developers are doing this to us, the Gamers - we definitely have it coming. In fairness,Ascending Infernoseems relatively gentle for a Foddlike. It’s more of a traditional 2.5D platformer, with luscious voxel and pixel art, and mechanics specific to certain levels. That said, it does rely entirely on ball physics.
The setup is that you’re a Goth footballer called Dani, who is trying to rescue her brother Vincent from Hell. Vincent, unfortunately, no longer has a body. He’s an ectoplasmic orb with eyes. On the upside, this means he can’t independently get himself into trouble, like many an NPC in an escort quest. On the downside - nine realms deep, to be exact - this means that he is quite capable of rolling and tumbling all the way to the bottom of the level. “It’s not enough to run, jump and platform your way out of Hell - you’ll need to dribble, kick and header [as well]” gloatsthe Steam page. Yeah, screw you too.
Again, I don’t think this is as Foddable as some of the Fodder I’ve encountered. It doesn’t look nearly as soul-crushing asPushing It! With Sisyphus, and there’s no multiplayer like inChained Together, so it won’t even ruin all your real-life friendships.
I also really like the obvious fun the developers have had with the realms of the afterlife, each pilfered fromDante’s Infernoand equipped with its own visual direction. The trailer gives us a few glimpses: Gluttony is a squalid diner, Lust is a heaving nightclub, Fraud is like a rundown Castlevania themepark. It makes me want to play a Sonic The Hedgehog game set in hell. That’s where a lot of Sonic games belong, in fairness.
