Master forbidden magic. Dodge the rent. Survive the Tower. You are an apprentice wizard in a real-time card game brimming with terrible ideas. Pray for coin, study forbidden texts, and climb floor by floor before hunger and the Hunters close in. Seven fates await. Dare to earn the right one.

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About This Game

You are an Apprentice Wizard, inexperienced, curious, slightly out of your depth and newly assigned to a Tower full of rooms and secrets. Perhaps you seek arcane mastery and Apotheosis. Perhaps you just want to afford your rent.

Apprentice Ascending is a single-player, real-time card game played on a virtual tabletop. Every part of your life is a card: your health, your mood, your money, your problems. Drag cards to interact, combine them to act, and watch the timers tick down. Outcomes resolve. The table gets slowly, interestingly worse.


The Chapel pays you to pray for the townsfolk. The flock looks up to you for help. Meanwhile, the Clocktower ticks. Pray, pay and meditate. That is the life of an apprentice. But you intend to be more. The Tower promises something greater.

Combine ingredients to discover powerful spells. Translate foreign books. Meet new people and trade for tools. Arm yourself with magic and iron. Build an ever expanding arsenal to take on the Tower and the dangers within.

The Stairwell goes up, the problems come down. Explore floor by floor to uncover loot, traps, escalating encounters, bosses, and things best left undescribed. Perform rituals in the Chamber to craft, transmute, and rank yourself up from Apprentice to something more worthy.

Time is never on your side. Cards decay. Hunger grows. And somewhere below, someone has started asking questions about you. The stronger you become the more traces you leave behind. The Gate appears when the Hunters catch your scent. Three clues and they find you.

Every ending is earned, and most are regrettable. Your runs will end when you:

  • Be slain

  • Go broke

  • Get hunted

  • Lose your mind

  • Drown in gold

  • Or climb all six floors and earn the Apotheosis your school deserves

Death may come. But knowledge endures. Every attempt teaches you something new, and every lesson brings you one step closer to the top.

Will you reach the top?

Dare to try?

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

We used AI to generate initial concept art, and card images.
All materials were then thoroughly edited, reworked, and finalized by humans.
Nothing went straight from the generator into the game.

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD equivalent
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible, 1 GB VRAM
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 1 GB available space
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 11 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i7-8700 or AMD equivalent
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible, 2 GB VRAM
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 1 GB available space
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