return is a game about trying and dying in quick succession and it will get a new update soon. Developer Housemarque’s exclusive PlayStation 5 was originally released in April 2021 and has received updates since launch. The next, the version 3.0 Ascension update, was announced during Sony’s latest State of Play livestream.
On Wednesday, Housemarque released 19 minutes of Ascension gameplay, which includes online co-op multiplayer for players with a PlayStation Plus subscription. There’s also a new Tower of Sisyphus, a challenging 20-story tower that gets progressively more difficult as Seline fights through its denizens and rises to higher levels.
The 19-minute preview of Ascension gives players a glimpse of what climbing the Tower of Sisyphus actually looks like. Each floor has multiple rooms and players must survive and try to solve bonus objections. There’s also a point multiplier – the longer a player lingers, the more they risk losing that multiplier, so there’s a balance to be struck between covering as much ground as possible and trying to do it quickly.
“While there are secrets and optional routes to take, the Tower aims to be distilled into an arcade action experience with an emphasis on survival, skill and focused progression,” said game director Harry Krueger in a PlayStation blog post.
The demonstration also features a new boss called Algos and some new story cutscenes that suggest we’ll be discovering more about the world of return and its protagonist Seline. The Ascension update is free and scheduled for release on March 22nd.
