Champions Ascension

Introduction

Champions Ascension’s Massina is a theme-park metaverse where everyone can play, earn, socialize and create new content. Your Champions hail from many different worlds and backgrounds, but they have all come to Massina to chase a dangerous, glorious dream: to conquer the Colosseum Eternal. For some, it is a personal mission. For others, a question of honor. Failure comes at a high cost, but victory…victory brings a glory only few will experience in this lifetime.

In this closed alpha version of Champions Ascension, we explore a portion of Massina. As you can see on the game's website, there is a lot yet to be released or still under development and is yet to be revealed. Nonetheless, what Jam City has made available so far is stunning and looks very well made. A city map with a few blocks to explore including a town square, a tavern, some back alleys, and a variety of NPCs with a diverse selection of mini games to explore.

Gameplay

During this closed alpha, which more and more people are getting access to, we have the ability to test out not just social features and movement but dive into some mini games and the Colosseum Eternal PvP arena. The world feels lively due to the strategic placement of NPCs and setting specific time slots in which players are able to jump in. The games that are currently available to play and enjoy are as follows:

Crab Racing in which you can pick one of the funny named crabs (puns intended in the names) and hope for it to do well enough to reach the outside of the table first. You have to be aware from any tricks other players can pull on you to deter your crab's direction and its performance. Before the race is over, the table is filled with multiple crabs each representing a player.

Dudo, in which 6 players each start of with 5 dice and try to bluff their way or call the others bluff till a winner is crowned. Each mistake costs you one of your dice and thus further increasing the difficulty to lie. Where the victor remains with at least 1 dice and the rest fumbled under the table, how good is your lie? Speaking of which another fun game that involves lying and a keen mind is Flow Shop where you have to get 3 flower runs across all while trying to solve the conundrum set before you of 2 imposters in your group.

Through smart thinking and social reading, you’ll have to figure out how to flush out these rats and get your smuggles across. If you have had enough of loosing and getting beat worry not as you can get hammered and participate in some Runk Dracing, aka Drunk Racing, make your way across the town and make sure to chug your cegs before moving on to the next stall. Getting more and more drunk with each chug done and with that getting your hot keys messed up. Can you finish first?

Last but certainly not least is the Arena. Currently loaded with a set of champions for you to test your skills on and play test the variety of skills available to each of them based off of their individual traits. This will translate to the traits your NFT champion holds. A very nice put together battle system which is being tweaked on constantly to provide a balanced system. There is more then meets the eye on this one. Not just managing your light and heavy attacks and your abilities that are available to you, their respective cool downs but also a rock paper scissor system in which some backgrounds have strengths and weaknesses against one another. In future releases, there will be upgrades, materials and lets not forget Glory to be won and ascend your Challenger to higher ranks.

Review

With the current alpha version that is available and the fact we can play with friends and beat them up, Champions Ascension is an enjoyable game for a few hours to jump into. The rich lore that is in constant development is fun and easy to dive into to get to know the characters you are playing as. We must say the currently game lacks the depth to dive into this for much more than the currently available slots of 2 hours.

Future releases and updates will surely add to this and we can see this become a very interesting platform to interact with on a daily or couple time a week basis. Furthermore the interactive aspects promised such as forging of weapons, breeding and ascending challengers will surely be an interesting and engaging element we look forward to try out. All-in-all a solid game in development in which we hope to see everything on the roadmap come into reality.