De/Ascend

YOU CAN'T RUN. YOU CAN'T HIDE. IT ALWAYS KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE.
De/Ascend is a first-person story-based survival horror game with FMV Elements set in the near future, where you wake up in a locked-down underground facility without any memories of your prior life or how you got there. Now you have to ascend from the deepest levels of the facility and escape its horrors while being pursued by a monstrous entity that always knows exactly where you are.
Something is hunting you, and it doesn't need to see or hear you to find you. It always knows where you are. There's no outrunning it, only outsmarting it. Your only chance is to stay quiet. Stay moving. Stay one step ahead: Create distractions, slip away, manipulate your surroundings, and create temporary safe zones. But nothing keeps it away forever. Every moment of safety is borrowed.
The only way out is up. But getting there won't be easy. Access to the only elevator to the surface is blocked, so you'll have to find another way forward. Explore an underground complex filled with environmental storytelling, hidden records, locked areas, and secrets waiting to be uncovered. Search your surroundings for resources, solve riddles, and piece together clues to find your way through the facility. As you make your way up, you'll uncover more about what happened here… and why you can't remember any of it.
You're outmatched. You can defend yourself, but brute force won't get you far. Make the most of what you have, choose your moments carefully, and know when to run. Resources are scarce, and your inventory is limited. Choose carefully what you carry: every item takes up space, and you never know what you'll need next.
Video logs. Surveillance footage. Corporate broadcasts. Old advertisements. Scattered throughout the facility, these recordings give you glimpses into the people and events that unfolded before you woke up. Watch them to uncover new clues and slowly piece together what happened and why. Live-action footage and the 3D world come together to tell the story.
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KEY FEATURES:
Story-Driven Survival Horror: Piece together who you are and what went wrong through the people you meet, their recordings, and the secrets they're hiding. 

Real Faces, Real Footage: Characters are brought to life with live-action footage as face textures.

Explore & Uncover: Search the facility, uncover its secrets, and solve codes and puzzles to progress. 

Outsmart, Don't Outgun: Stealth is your main tool. Distract, hide, and slip away, using every trick you can think of to evade and defend yourself against the things hunting you.

Every Slot Counts: Limited space, tough choices: every item you carry matters. 

Retro-Look: A low-fi, pixelated style with scanlines and analog distortion gives the 3D world an unsettling, worn, and degraded feeling in stark contrast to the futuristic setting.  

Near-Future Dystopia: Corporations hold all the power, resources are running dry, and Empyreus Industries wants to secure its place at the top.  

Multiple Threats: The entity isn't the only thing hunting you. Other enemies are roaming the facility, and none of them want you to get out.