Art
The intro is done
Thirty-one seconds of paper, gold thread and candlelight. Ascension's world is not introduced with a map: it is introduced with a book that opens by itself.
It is finished. This is Ascension’s intro.
Where it comes from
One idea governs the whole game: what happens in Ascension is a story someone is writing in a book. I already wrote about how that decision rewrote the entire interface — starting a run is opening the book, pausing is turning a page, saving is writing in it.
The intro is that same idea in its most literal form: the book opens and the world rises off the page.
The material
Nothing digitally smooth. The rule for the piece was that you had to see the paper:
- Die-cut layers and cut-out characters, white edges and all.
- Silk threads standing in for rivers.
- Gold thread chains stitching the world’s three layers together.
- Visible paper fibre throughout.
And cinematic macro photography: shallow depth of field, warm candlelight, dust motes in the air, and that stop-motion cadence that makes the paper look hand-moved. The camera does not watch the book from outside; it lives inside it.
The thirty seconds
They are a distillation. The full in-game intro script runs 85 to 95 seconds and is what you will see when you start a run; this is its cinematic cut, made to be shown on its own.
In the first half the book opens and the map rises into a diorama. In the second, the camera dives inside and the three stacked layers appear — golden sky, green valley, dark root — stitched to one another. What happens after that, I would rather you watched.
What comes next
Next on video is the thing that really counts, and the hardest to show well: footage of the game running.
If you want them as they land, the channel is here.