Roguelike strategy games tend to lean on one of two aesthetics…Grim and serious, or bright and whimsical. This week’s hidden gem does both, commiting fully to being grotesque and strangely charming at the same time.
Released in 2021 by Talia bob Mair and Nicolás Delgado under the ItsTheTalia banner, Brutal Orchestra has built an Overwhelmingly Positive rating from close to 1,900 Steam reviews. However, it barely comes up in conversations about the genre’s best turn-based roguelikes.
That’s a shame, because underneath the Hieronymus Bosch-inspired horror show, this is one of the more distinct turn-based strategy games you’ll find on Steam.
Revenge From Beyond the Grave
You died. Someone killed you. That’s the entire premise, and Brutal Orchestra wastes no time getting you out of the afterlife’s waiting room and into a deal with a demon named Bosch, who sets you loose in Purgatory to hunt down whoever put you there.
It’s a dark comedy that provides genuinely tense turn-based combat, and the tone shifts constantly. One encounter plays like body horror, the next like slapstick. Rather than clashing, the two somehow make each other funnier and more unsettling at the same time. It helps that the whole world is drenched in “pigment,” a bleeding, otherworldly substance you channel to pull off your party’s more absurd and powerful abilities.
Recruit the Damned, Then Deck Them Out
Your party isn’t made up of heroes, it’s made up of Fools, the pathetic, broken remnants of whoever else ended up stuck in Purgatory with you. Some are genuinely useful in a fight. Most are barely holding themselves together. Recruiting them anyway, and figuring out how to make their damaged abilities work together, is where a lot of the game’s strategy actually lives.
Combat leans into resource management and deckbuilding rather than simple stat checks, and the game isn’t shy about punishing sloppy planning. Every fight asks you to think about which Fools to bring, which pigment to spend, and which of the over 100 artifacts scattered through Purgatory are worth building your run around. Two players recruiting the same Fools can end up with completely different parties depending on which artifacts and abilities they lean into.
A World Built From Nightmares and Punchlines
What keeps runs feeling unique is how much Brutal Orchestra commits to its own weirdness. The world isn’t just a backdrop, it’s full of parasitic fish, storm-choked mountains, and a garden waiting at the end of it all, each area introducing new demented friends and foes to either recruit or fight through.
Perma-death sits underneath all of it, so a bad string of decisions can end a run in an instant. But between the constantly shifting party composition, the artifact pool, and a world that never settles into anything predictable, even a failed run tends to leave you with a new idea worth trying next time.
Why We Recommend It
The turn-based combat has real depth to it, but it’s the presentation, dark, cartoonish, and unapologetically strange, that makes Brutal Orchestra memorable. Recruiting a rotating cast of damaged Fools instead of static heroes is a unique take, and the sheer number of artifacts means no two runs end up playing quite the same way.
It’s also a game that clearly knows what it is. Rather than softening its horror elements or playing its comedy safe, it leans fully into both, and that confidence is a big part of why it’s earned such a loyal following among the people who’ve actually found it.
A Hidden Gem Every Roguelike Fan Should Play
Turn-based roguelikes are an increasingly crowded genre, which makes it easy for something this inventive to slip past people scrolling for their next run. Brutal Orchestra deserves better than that.
Between its damaged cast of Fools, its pigment-fuelled combat, and a world that treats horror and humor as the same thing, this is a roguelike with a genuine identity of its own. If you’ve been looking for a turn-based strategy game that doesn’t play it safe, this week’s Hidden Gem is worth adding to your wishlist.