It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS with entirely true-3D graphics. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way.

The Story Behind Descent

Parallax Software and Interplay followed the shareware model used by Apogee and id Software, and on December 24, 1994; uploaded a seven-level shareware demo as Descent both in retail and on the Internet. Within the game, sides of cubes can be attached to other cubes, or display up to two texture maps. The project was originally titled Miner, but Parallax presented their prototype in written letters to 50 game companies as Inferno.

Parallax would implement artistic and structural changes that Apogee requested. They set out to contact publishers, including Scott Miller of Apogee Software, id Software's primary publisher, who was excited about their proposal and signed a contract with them. Customer reception of the shareware version of Descent was very positive, with players praising the fully 3D environment and commentators noting perceived "loyalty and goodwill" that both Parallax and Interplay fostered.

How Descent Plays

Like its computer versions, criticism commonly centered on the player's disorientation. Beginning with Hotshot, players get skill bonuses at the end of each mine. Charlie Brooker of PC Zone noted the game's intense environment and similarities to Doom and praised its multiplayer and ability to taunt opposing players, with only minor criticism directed toward its slight repetitiveness.

The ship respawns at the start of the level at the cost of a life and the player can return to the area of the demise of their previous ship to recover these power-ups. The combination of traditional first-person shooter mechanics with that of a space flight simulator was also well received. 10 of the top Macintosh games in December 1995.

Why Players Still Load It Up

Another game, Overload, was announced on Kickstarter by Revival Productions and successfully crowdfunded in 2016. It is a six-degrees-of-freedom tunnel shooter and a spiritual successor to the Descent games that released in 2018. Similarities would have included plot points such as an evil faceless corporation and the mysterious "Plague" they are attempting to harness.

It brought about a handful of similar "Descent clones", most notably Forsaken, which was released by Acclaim Entertainment in 1998 and had similar graphics and almost identical gameplay to Descent. Descent is credited with starting a subgenre of six-degrees-of-freedom first-person shooters, and remains an icon of the subgenre. In 1997, Interplay released Descent to Undermountain, a role-playing video game that used a modified version of the Descent graphics engine.

Descent — Frequently Asked Questions