Dark Ascension is a singleplayer shooter set inside a grim, industrial warehouse at night. Taking inspiration from Bloodborne and the Uncharted series, the level challenges the player to ascend through increasingly hostile floors to retrieve the Sapphire Egg — an ancient artifact guarded at the top of the building. The warehouse is vertically structured across multiple floors, each guarded by enemies armed with different weapon types. The player fights upward through tight corridors, open staging areas, and elevated catwalks, making moment-to-moment decisions about when to fight, when to flank, and when to push forward.
The level uses a Soulslike persistence system: death resets all enemies and ammo pickups, but any shortcut doors the player has already unlocked remain open. This means each run is faster and less punishing than the last — the player is never sent back to zero, only back to their most recent foothold. Killing enemies rewards the player with partial health recovery and a few rounds of their weapon type, making aggressive play the most efficient strategy for resource management.
LEVEL LAYOUT
Dark Ascension is structured across four active floors of an industrial warehouse, with a underground basement serving as the final boss arena. Progression is broadly linear and vertical — the player climbs floor by floor — but the level is threaded with shortcuts that collapse travel time on repeat runs, echoing the Soulslike design philosophy that death should never feel like a full reset.
Floor 1 — Tutorial Hall. The player spawns in a ground-floor corridor and picks up their first weapon, the pistol. This floor introduces all basic controls: moving, vaulting, running, and shooting. Enemy density is low. At the end of the hallway is a locked door that only opens after the player completes the full run and kills the final boss — a shortcut that closes the loop on the entire level geographically.
Floor 2 — Circular Structure. The player ascends via stairs into a large circular floor with an outdoor section. Two routes are available from the start: one clearly visible, one hidden behind a large closet. The hidden route has fewer enemies and reaches the floor exit faster, rewarding observant players who explore rather than follow the obvious path. The outdoor area contains a ladder — the main vertical shortcut of the level — that bypasses floor 3 entirely once the player has unlocked it.
Floor 3 — Mechanical Introduction (cut from final game). Originally a dedicated floor introducing shotguns, explosive barrels, and persistent shortcut doors. Removed from the final build due to scope. Its core shortcut — a cross-room path that lets the player skip most of the floor to reach the stairs — was preserved and repurposed in the transition to the shipped version. The ladder shortcut from floor 2's outdoor area now connects directly to the final encounter floor.
Floor 4 — Mastery Test. The most enemy-dense floor and the site of the final encounter documented in this portfolio. The AR is introduced here, completing the player's arsenal. The floor demands fluency with every mechanic — flanking, explosive barrels, shortcut doors, weapon switching, kill-to-heal — before the player can reach the elevator at the deepest corner of the room.
Basement — Final Boss. The elevator descends to an underground arena where the player confronts the mission target: an unarmed figure who is the narrative endpoint of the level, framed like a contract kill in the vein of John Wick. Killing the boss triggers the shortcut door at the end of floor 1's hallway, allowing the player to exit and complete the level.
