The structure of Ascent is highly reminiscent of Metroid II. Providing 3 zones in a linear sequence with non-linear exploration performed inside each zone. This has the great benefit of reigning in the number of possible places to explore for progress and keeps the pace rolling.
I sadly encountered a lot of graphical and audio glitches, thus damaging the presentation. An absolutely solid piece of design work however, with great use of the vanilla SM tileset and a few custom additions employed to create distinct locales.