Retro dungeon crawler Brutal is out today on PS4

Hey everyone! I’m really excited to finally announce that Brutal is live today on PlayStation Store!

Brutal is a modern re-imagining of classic ASCII roguelike and dungeon crawler games, brought up to date with procedurally generated levels, weapon crafting, potion brewing, a levelling system and perma-death as a key mechanic.

If you missed our announcement trailer from PlayStation Experience, you can check it out now here:

The goal of Brutal is simple: reach level 26 and defeat the fearsome Dungeon Guardian. It might seem straightforward enough but as you start with nothing but your bare fists and an unlit torch, it’s actually quite difficult to achieve. In order to succeed you must fight, loot and explore to learn new skills, craft new weapons, brew potions, and get stronger as you face off against an onslaught of ever more challenging enemies.

While we do have perma-death as a key feature, we’ve changed things up a little. We’re gamers ourselves and we understand it’s not always possible to dedicate hours at a time to a game – let alone a dungeon crawler that actively attempts to kill you.

As such, in Brutal, you can save your progress at any moment by simply pausing your run. This will allow you to pick up where you left off at another time.

In addition to this we’ve also added a reincarnation mechanic. The more you explore of Brutal, the more loot you will find. Loot is essentially your score, so the more loot you collect, the better your score.

However, you can exchange some of your score for the chance of an extra life by making an offering at a God Altar. Offer enough loot to please the gods and an extra life will be granted. Beware though: offer too little and the gods will be angered, destroying their altar, and leaving you with your life, and progress, in peril.

Maintaining an ASCII aesthetic throughout while also ensuring it made sense and was fun was essential to Brutal being a great game. I think the best example of how we achieved this comes with weapon crafting. In the game you will find ASCII letters scattered throughout our procedurally generated levels — these are in essence crafting materials, the building blocks of the world.

These letters are used in conjunction with blueprints to create powerful weapons that you’ll use to survive. We have three tiers of weapon: bronze, silver, and legendary. Each of which requires a different set of letters to craft. Exploring levels will maximise your chances of finding additional ASCII letters and weapon blueprints.

As well as the single-player experience we also have a two-player local multiplayer mode. We revealed more about this in an earlier PlayStation Blog post.

Finally, Brutal also features a level editor, allowing you to not only create your own dungeon levels, but also share them online so everyone from around the world can enjoy them. Even if you’re not into making levels yourself, this will allow you to play some fantastic, weird, and most likely whacky levels from the community. We’re equally excited and terrified…