Not styled like text. Made of text.
Battle for Asciion is not just styled like text — it is text.
Every ship, enemy, explosion, background and boss is rendered in real time using actual ASCII characters.
There are no sprites, no textures, no PNGs hidden behind the scenes.
What you see on screen is literal text.
Classic arcade action
Inspired by legendary horizontal shooters like Gradius and R-Type, Battle for Asciion delivers tight, old-school arcade gameplay focused on precision, memorization and pure skill.
Fight through five long, challenging stages, face giant end-of-level bosses, and upgrade your weapons to survive increasingly intense waves of enemies — all represented purely through text.
Retro display modes
To enhance the old-school feel, the game includes multiple visual modes that simulate classic CRT monitors, including scanlines and monochrome phosphor colors such as green, amber and white.
It looks like a terminal.
It plays like an arcade machine.
Textshot™ — Screenshots as real text
Battle for Asciion is so text-based that it includes a unique feature we call Textshot™.
Instead of saving screenshots as images, Textshot™ captures the current frame and saves it as a plain .TXT file containing the actual ASCII characters displayed on screen.
Open it in any text editor. Copy it. Share it. Print it.
It’s not an image — it’s the game, frozen in pure text form.
Key Features
Classic horizontal shoot ’em up gameplay inspired by arcade legends
100% real-time ASCII graphics — no sprites, no images, no textures
Five long stages with massive text-based bosses
Weapon upgrade system with strategic depth
Deploy a single Option to extend your firepower
Multiple CRT-style display modes (scanlines, green / amber / white phosphor)
Textshot™: save gameplay frames as real .TXT files
Local high-score leaderboard for true arcade competition
Controller Support
Controller support via Steam Input (keyboard emulation).
Fully playable with keyboard or controller.