
Screenshots

Watch trailer on Steam ↗Apprentice Ascending
Bluebuck · Published by Bluebuck · Official site ↗
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
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.
Indie, RPG, Simulation · More free games
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?
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →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
Supported Languages
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
The Apprentice Ascending Demo Is Now Live!
The demo is out now, free: What the demo covers One whole floor of the Tower, with 6 rooms, 70 cards, encounters, quests, combat with afflictions, multiple endings, full pause and speed controls, and autosave. Live cards: Your health, your focus, your money and your problems are all physical cards on the table. Real time rooms: Timers keep running while you think, and any number of rooms can be open at once. Discover secrets: Different spells, rooms and events along with hidden recipes. Experiment and expand your arsenal.Struggle and prevail: Anxiety, hunger, and injuries. Many ways to die, but through them is the way up. Face the tower and ascend. Not in the demo Later floors and their encounters and bosses, the Avatar ranks and the Ascend spells past this floor, and the endings that need deep progression. Feedback If something reads wrong, resolves wrong, or simply feels unfair, tell us in the Steam discussions. Demo feedback goes straight into the full game. Thanks for playing.Read full article on Community Announcements (Bluebuck Games)






