Astral Ascent is a game I've wanted to try for a while now. It looks quite similar to Dead Cells but I think the more time you've spent on Dead Cells, the less it actually feels like it in practice.

Fundamentally, they're quite similar - it's a biome-based action platformer with combo-based combat, but there's a lot bigger focus on aerial combat in Astral Ascent and in many ways the moment-to-moment combat feels more like Smash.

I prefer the way Astral Ascent weaves your secondary attacks into the way you play. In Dead Cells I feel like your two shoulder-button attacks can be largely ignored, but in Astral Ascent they can't be; you're not going to get far if you don't use them. In general, I don't like timers in games; if something has a timer, I find it very difficult to rely on it. Astral Ascent circumvents this by using your primary attack to build up mana, which is then spent when you use your secondary attack.

Secondary attacks cycle in a linear fashion - you have 4, and when you use 1, the next up is the one in your second slot and so forth. At first I was unsure that this would work, especially in a rogue-lite where that's going to be different every run, but I found I got used to it pretty easily.

There seems to be 4 mechanics for in-run progression. You can get auras which are passive buffs, ranging from strength increases to timer-based auto-attacks (these are fun!), gambits which are slots on your secondary attacks, infusions which are like auras but they attach to your secondary attacks, and feathers, which increase the level of your individual secondary attacks (which in turn adds more bonuses to them - not just improving their strength or whatever).

Meta-progression is a little more wooly. You have the ability to unlock permanent upgrades like more base health, more starting options for your secondary attack etc - fairly standard stuff. You can unlock more playable characters, outfit colours, secondary attacks, and achievements that just give you more currency to spend on permanent unlocks. I've only played a few hours so far and I've unlocked almost everything so hopefully getting to a certain point unlocks even more otherwise I'm nearly done!

I don't think I'd mind that, though. The game itself is a lot of fun, and I don't really care if meta-progression is a bit flat. I've done maybe 6 runs and the furthest I've got is just before the 4th boss (there seems to be 5 bosses total per run), but it feels like there's a lot of replayability here. Plus when a run ends, you can see all the enemies you've killed and that is very satisfying!