HIGH LIFE

How an indie superteam built a dizzying cyberpunk city with the help of Xbox Series X, and positioned itself at the pinnacle of the next generation

- JEN SIMPKINS

Don’t look down. It’s the mantra of all those who fix their sights on a point high above their heads and vow to make it to the top. But in The Ascent, it’s impossible not to: the edges of the tower we are climbing are constantly, mercilessly kept in our peripheral vision. Out there, away from the gunfire and the tentacles, drones dart through tangles of cables thatched across a nearbottomless chasm. Disused balconies – more than we can count – line the sides of it, floors falling away below as far as the eye can see. And so the kick of a shotgun is always tempered with a lurch of the stomach.

So it is, too, over at Neon Giant, the Swedish indie studio responsible for this behemothic creation. Much of the world may be on pause right now, but as we sit down to speak with slightly frazzled co-founders Tor Frick and Arcade Berg, it’s clear the studio is currently working overtime. All 11 people at Neon Giant are pouring everything into finalising the details of the biggest announcement of their careers: their debut game will be an Xbox Series X launch title, leading the charge for the next generation of videogames. The length of their to-do list is, for now, helping them to not think too hard about just how far they’ve come. Here we are to force them to look: to ask, in no uncertain terms, how they got here. “Yeah,” Frick says, shaking his head in disbelief as he repeats our question to himself: “How did that happen?”