Indie games with a pixel art style are a fairly common sight these days, but I can't say I've seen many that have picked ASCII as their style of choice. But as you can probably guess from the title, Brut@l - an oldschool dungeon crawler with a procedurally generated world constructed entirely out of ASCII characters, belongs to that rather small group.

Since the concept is fairly ambitious, and since most ASCII games were created that way due to technological limitations rather than due to preference, it would probably be wise to first start with a trailer. As such, here's the most recently posted co-op gameplay video to hopefully give you a good idea of what Brut@l is all about. Have a look:

While the graphics might be intentionally simple, the gameplay seems to be anything but. Each enemy type has their own attack style and weakness which you will need to learn through repeated hits to the face experience, and as you progress deeper through the dungeon you'll start meeting more challenging combinations of enemies. So in other words you'll need to constantly adjust your strategy depending on the variety and number of enemies you face.

In order to rise up to the challenge and beat down the forces of ASCII hell you'll also have to acquire some better gear. For Brut@l this means creating new types of weapons with special move-sets to help you progress, and also enchanting them with a variety of status effects which can either help you out... or result in the enemy growing in power should you whack the wrong one over the head. Besides weapons you'll also be able to brew potions (the drinkable and throwable variants), and craft powerful Talismans to give yourself an edge over your enemies.

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, and the visuals don't make you slightly woozy, you'll be glad to hear that you won't have to wait for very long as Brut@l is set to launch this February 9th. To find out more I'd recommend you head over to Steam. And finally, here's a couple of images: