Roguelookalike: ASCII-y FPS Illuminascii Released
That's a pun, gang
Many games bear traces of Rogue and Roguelikes in their modern shells - your modern roguelikelikes like The Binding of Isaac and Spelunky - but they're usually bits like procedurally-generated levels, mysterious items, and permadeath. New roguelikelike FPS Illuminascii [official site] also takes into its modern shell ASCII graphics.
It's a strange mish-mash of 3D and ASCII symbols, where the player character is a 3D @ character (of course) and enemies are also characters, while guns are made of ASCII art and levels can be too. You can see for yourself, as the game launched last night.
Illuminascii is a roguelikelike FPS set in a sci-fi world mixing primitive 3D and ASCII art. In roguelikelike fashion, weapons, levels, potion-like energy drinks, enemies, and so on all have random touches. That giant hovering letter you're facing might be... who even knows? An Infected Bishop, Terrifying Corpse; Generic Video Game, Satanic Cockroach, Insane Cricket Bat... it's both randomised and a bit, you know, 'random'.
The game's out on Windows, Mac, and Linux for £7.99 on Steam, where the first few user reviews are looking not wholly impressed. Here's the launch trailer with a text-to-speech Misfits cover:
This second video's a year older, and therefore shows the game quite incomplete, but is perhaps more informative:
