The Babble Bruh Reviews

You wake up in purgatory. Someone’s killed you. It sucks. A demon approaches you, extends his hand, and tells you, “Hey, the guy who killed you will be here soon. I know where he’ll be. Want to jump his ass when he gets here?” Hell yeah, I’m shaking that hand.

Brutal Orchestra is a game that came out in 2021 and had me hooked the moment I saw the trailer. It’s a turn-based, pixel-art roguelike, which, although a mouthful and not exactly original gameplay-wise, stands out from the crowd in my opinion with a very cool art style, some very in-depth and engaging gameplay, and a very intriguing world and story to explore.

The game starts with you waking up as the main man named Nowak, a broken dude with an even more broken-looking face. A shadowy and totally trustworthy-looking entity named “Bosch” approaches you and gives you the lowdown on your situation. As mentioned in the opening, you’ve been murdered, and if you decide to work with Bosch, he’ll let you beat the ass of the guy who did it—all you have to do is get to the spot where he’ll be. As you travel through purgatory, you’ll meet all sorts of fun and interesting characters. Some will help you or even travel with you, and some will totally just straight up kill you. It’s fun, and one of my favorite moments was running into a boss that was literally Hitler stuck in the moment before killing himself. He’s got a bag on his head with a gun in hand, and every time he attacks, he has a chance to shoot anyone on screen (including himself). That’s flavor, and it’s hella tasty. The game is a roguelike, meaning each attempt at getting through purgatory will be semi-random, and if you get your shit kicked in, you’ll have to start back from square one. It’s fun, pretty challenging, sometimes frustrating, but still totally addicting because I wanted to learn more about the characters and the world I was in.

A major point that would be criminal of me not to bring up is how the game looks and what it was inspired by. Your definitely-not-evil buddy “Bosch” is literally Hieronymus Bosch, a famous Dutch painter from the 15th century who made a lot of really trippy and cool-looking religious paintings. His artwork directly inspired the art style of this game, and I think the developers did a fantastic job converting his sick style into a playable experience.

The gameplay itself is very cool, with a lot of room for mastering. If you’re a fan of strategic turn-based combat, you’ll find this game easy to jump into with a surprising amount of depth. Each character fights with a color-based resource system on a grid, and enemies have colored health bars showing you which types of moves are most effective on them. Nowak, for instance, has a kit that produces yellow points, whereas other characters can make red, blue, and other colors. During combat, you position your characters on a 5×2 grid to attack or dodge enemies on the other side while using your colored points to attack or perform special moves with their respective costs. Like the title suggests, you’re building your own little orchestra of characters that synergize with one another based on their abilities. For instance, one character could be really good at making a lot of yellow points, while your heavy-hitting character specializes in doing big damage if he has lots of yellow points to spend. It’s fun to experiment with, and my monkey brain gets big dopamine hits when it all comes together to beat a challenging encounter. That, combined with the banging soundtrack, makes this game a dopamine avalanche when everything pops off.

I’m not going to spoil the story, but the drip-fed plot development and overall mystery really kept me intrigued and driven to keep trying after every brutal failure. This adventure is fun, not too long, and is a real treat for anyone who loves the weird. I’d recommend this game with a fat and spicy 7/10. I would get brutalized in the orchestra again and again for that sweet, sweet revenge.