PC indie narrative shooter A Thug’s Ascension

Infant Indian developer Moonwalk Games arrive at the indie scene with their dark, character-driven crime drama set in a dying, corrupt, and divided metropolis.

SURAT, INDIA, November 9, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — It is easy for writing in games to have to take a backseat when producers get too caught up in discussing the next most innovative game mechanic, and while all that is great, indie Indian (Indiean?) writer-director Adi Chandra and his team at Moonwalk Games have deliberately developed their debut title A Thug’s Ascension with the opposite mindset.

The game was announced this August in the DreamHack Beyond Indie Showcase, with a two-minute trailer showing off the game’s cinematography and gameplay, and demonstrating the grounded and slow-paced nature of the narrative in the action-adventure title. The game was also featured in this October’s Steam Next Fest, where Moonwalk premiered exclusive gameplay footage. A Thug’s Ascension will release worldwide on Steam on 30 November for Windows and macOS.

Players become the mercenary-for-hire badass known as just ‘Chief’, and launch themselves into a four-hour-long story driven by complex character arcs and a sophisticated plot. The game follows Chief’s mission of escaping the fictional megacity of Maratha—inspired from Mumbai—so as to leave the haunting pains of his past behind. This quest is compromised, however, by billionaire industrialist Dr. Sarkar, a rich power broker from the opposite end of the greate economic divide, as he enacts his plans of rebuilding Maratha in his own image by trying to control and destroy the entirety of its organised crime network. A Thug’s Ascension explores the themes of loss, trauma, responsibility, rage, and community as it chronicles the events of Sarkar’s plans clashing with Chief and his gang of outlaws, and how the political intrigue and the calculated conspiracies arduously escalate into an all-out “war for the nation’s greatest city”.

A Thug’s Ascension, while easily guilty of more story than gameplay, presents itself as a first-person shooter, complete also with driving, exploration, and occasional puzzle-solving. The campaign is divided into fifteen chapters, all demanding varying styles of gameplay, everything from blowing up powerful fortresses operated by rival gangs to epic city-wide car chases. The fast-paced combat, while very simple in its mechanics, places a strong emphasis on using the environment as a weapon— falling ceiling fans, flying gas cylinders, hittable gas pipes, exploding cars, jerry cans, and oil barrels just to name a few.

“As a game, this is where A Thug’s Ascension draws its strength from,” director Chandra explains. “We enjoyed our limitations. The game enjoys its own. My job as designer was thus to come up with the most fiendish ways to put our three simple mechanics of combat, driving, and interaction together into exciting and highly intense gameplay sequences, whether it’s a high-stakes prison escape or an all-out gang war in the middle of town.”

A Thug’s Ascension is releasing on the 30th of November for Windows and macOS, with a Linux port to follow soon after. You can wishlist the game on Steam through its store page.

Adi Chandra
Moonwalk Games
+91 70024 04919
sa.aditya.chandra@gmail.com
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A Thug’s Ascension – Trailer