Machiavelli's Ascent Review

Review written by Zikron on 2/21/09
Last edited on 2/21/09

Published by: Naturally Formed Studios

Naturally Formed Studios Description: Better than bottled water. Experience being a negatively buoyant jellyfish who wants nothing more than for the sweet warm sun to kiss his hydrostatic skeleton. Use flow controls to glide through the ocean’s depths as you ascend in this liquid platformer. Maintain your ascent by gathering melodious nutrient bubbles as you play, chaining collisions to build up aurally stimulating combos.

Machiavelli's Ascent is a very simple game which is its greatest asset but also it's biggest weakness. The concept is simple hit bubbles to go up, the higher up you go the better. The controls match the games simplicity, press A once to go then just the left and right triggers to slide to the left and the right. The game ends when you lose your upwards momentum and you sink all the way to the bottom.

The best feature of Machiavelli's Ascent is the combining beautiful 2D graphics with stimulating audio. This is very similar to the formula that made Johnathan Mak's Everyday Shooter such a success. This results in putting the gamer into a trance like state where the sole focus is on the game and achieving the highscore.

The problem with Machiavelli's Ascent is that there is no endgame, no levels, no congratulations, nothing. You go for the high score time after time and even if you are successful the result is still the same, you fall to the bottom and try to beat it again. The same concept of all those calculator games kids play in high school on their graphing calculators. This provides very little incentive to come back for anything other than to kill time. When I'm playing games on a video game console I'm not looking for a time killer, I'm looking to an intereactive experience.

Overall Machiavelli's Ascent does what it sets out to do very well. At only 200 Microsoft Points the game is very enticing. Also, Naturally Formed Studios recently posted on their blog that they have been approved by Apple as a software developer which may mean that Machiavelli's Ascent may be heading to the iPhone. Once on the iPhone Naturally Formed Studios can make the game control by tilting the iPhone left and right to move for a much more engaging experience. If that is this case I think this game will be a must buy for iPhone owners if priced between $3 - $5 as it will be a great time killer.