metroid go up

On a more serious note, it's interesting to see each area presented more as a "level", locking you out once you decide to leave. Benox noted the design intention was to feel like "multiple small hacks put into one with a connected progression and world", and it certainly delivers on that promise.
- Miranda Gemini

Ascent's 3 segmented areas and bottom-to-top gameplay make for an unusual, creative but very entertaining experience.
- Cosmic

Ascent has a lot of really neat gimmicks that set it apart from the competition. Various ASM hacks, cool level design to complement the shinesparking, you name it. There's a ton of stuff here that really goes well with the hack!
- Sapphron

Tons of cool and unique mechanics implemented masterfully.
- MetroidNerd#9001

There is healing and hurty jelly. Anti-gravity ball platforms. New SBA combinations. But the best part is the hack is absolutely wide open, but to counteract the potential issue of players being extremely lost you get locked into an area and can't go back once you progress. The absolutely best decision one could make with a hack that is open like this.
- MetroidMst

For this award category, after having ruled out all other Metroid hacks from 2019, I compared the remaining 3 hacks - Kaizo Possible, HOTA, and Ascent - by thoroughly trying to explicitly count the number of instances of creative gameplay in each of the 3 hacks, because I wasn't quite sure which of the 3 did best in that regard. The outcome was a little surprising, because Kaizo Possible with 45 counted instances was left behind by quite a lot, whereas HOTA & Ascent both ended up around 110, but Ascent has the stronger case here.
- Aran;Jaeger