Game file / ROGUE BY ROGUEBrutal Orchestra
Brutal Orchestra is a Turn-Based Roguelike Strategy Game. You died, someone killed you. You are in Purgatory and you will never escape. Make a deal with the "demon" Bosch and set off into Purgatory finding all manner of demented friends and foes on your quest to get petty revenge.
Why this score?
Pigment resources and positional combat offer distinctive strategic depth. Random displacement and resource lockouts, however, can work against precise planning.
Machine-translated summary. The original review and its sources are preserved below.
Original text · Simplified Chinese
颜料资源与位置战斗有鲜明策略价值，随机位移和资源锁死却与精密规划产生摩擦。
Core gameplay
Weight 25%8.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：打击产生颜料，再按颜色与位置释放能力，使目标选择和行动次序形成独特战术谜题。
Builds & strategy
Weight 25%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：队伍位置、颜料供需和装备有相互制约，少量固定技能与单装备栏又让部分角色的构筑变化偏窄。
Replayability
Weight 20%7.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：解锁同伴和特殊敌人让新局出现新战术关系，但固定主角与重复区域减少长期组合和遭遇差异。
Randomness & fairness
Weight 20%6.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：位置与颜色允许提前规划，可是随机位移、颜色供应不足和部分瞬杀效果会破坏可预测的解法。
Polish & usability
Weight 10%7.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
根据资料评估：视觉和音效能表达战斗氛围，复杂状态与敌人规则仍需要反复查阅，教程保存流程也有阻力反馈。
- Reviewer
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Rogue by Rogue · AI 资料评测- Version reviewed
Original text · Simplified Chinese
具体构建未知；以所引资料描述的版本为准
Scope and limitations
Original text · Simplified Chinese
基于收录评论与官方产品说明的主观资料评测，未试玩；原始玩家评论及所有补丁未逐条重新核验。快照对长期内容量有分歧；未验证每种随机技能的具体概率，不把个别数字当作已确认规则。
Review sources 02
- 01Archived materialView archived external material ↓
Original text · Simplified Chinese
收录评论与社区资料（2026-10-01 快照）
使用 作者观点摘要 的具体玩法优缺点（Tier list Part 5 (2026)）以及 玩家好评与批评；只引用这些资料的具体反馈，不采纳旧等级或外部分数。
- 02Web sourceView original ↗
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Brutal Orchestra — Steam 官方商店页
2026-10-08 访问。确认了回合策略、资源管理、颜料颜色、招募同伴与装备系统。该页不作为实测性能或缺陷已修复的证据。
Video reviews
Reviews and deep dives from YouTube and Bilibili, in every language. Open the original video to watch.
Other voices, for reference.
Archived third-party reviews and community material may refer to different versions. External opinions and ratings are presented separately; consult the original videos for their full context.
Community discussion
A turn-based tactical roguelike set in a Hieronymus Bosch-inspired Purgatory, where you recruit a party of grotesque 'fools' and fight using a colour-coded pigment resource, made by Talia bob Mair and Nicolas Delgado and published by Hellbent Games.
Brutal Orchestra is a cult favourite with an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam rating (about 97.6% of roughly 2,100 reviews) and very long playtimes among its fans, some in the hundreds of hours. Players praise its distinctive art, music, dark humour, story and a pigment-based combat system that rewards planning. Critic coverage is thin: Metacritic has a page with no critic score yet and only a handful of user ratings (9.1 from 7), and OpenCritic shows nothing I could find. It is a full 1.0 release (Dec 2021), not early access, and Steam reviews say the developers were still adding free content years later, with an active Workshop mod scene. The main complaints are heavy RNG, pigment lockouts, weak-feeling items and characters, and a steep, unclear learning curve. Web search was unavailable for this run, so coverage of outlet reviews and Reddit is limited to Steam reviews, Metacritic and wiki pages.
What players praise
- Striking, grotesque art direction drawn from Hieronymus Bosch, with unusual enemy and companion designs
- Music and atmosphere: reviewers repeatedly call the soundtrack and per-enemy battle themes a highlight
- Pigment system: damaging enemies yields pigment matching their health-bar colour, which you spend on abilities, creating a dynamic puzzle of who to hit and in what order
- Positioning and enemy mechanics give turn-based fights a tactical, puzzle-like feel; many say each enemy and boss has its own mechanics
- Dark, bittersweet humour and a personal-feeling story; several reviewers call the narrative moving
- The full game opens up after the first winning run, with extra enemies, bosses, companions, difficulty and story that pull players to keep playing
- Large unlock pool (items, fools, achievements) that encourages replay without feeling like a chore, according to some reviewers
- Active Steam Workshop modding scene (40+ mods catalogued on the community wiki, including character, enemy and item packs) extends playtime for veterans
What players criticize
- Heavy RNG: random starting party members, coin-flip movement shifts on hit or attack, a roughly 40% chance for extra pigment, and random instant-kill moves on some enemies
- Pigment lockouts: if enemies do not supply the colour your party needs, you can be stuck with bad or forced abilities, or overflow pigment and take damage
- Characters have very few moves (two or three, sometimes randomly assigned) and one item slot, so builds feel limited and upgrades feel small
- Many items, especially before unlocks, are described as weak or useless, and some party members as nearly dead weight
- Only three zones and a limited enemy pool, so the same content repeats quickly (a Metacritic user notes seeing every enemy and boss by about the fifth run)
- Many enemy abilities and status effects are hard to keep track of; some players resort to guides or other players to learn the rules
- Some find the UX poor, and one Steam reviewer notes the tutorial could not be saved mid-way and lacks Steam Cloud saves
Distinctive features
- Pigment economy where hits generate colour you then spend on abilities, tying positioning, targeting and ability choice together
- Bosch-inspired Purgatory setting with grotesque, humorous characters and a story that unlocks more fully after the first winning run
- Party of oddball companions ('fools') with very few but distinctive abilities, instead of a large skill tree
- Boss and enemy fights with bespoke mechanics and theme songs, described as puzzle-like
- Strong mod support through Steam Workshop and a dedicated modding API and wiki
Divided opinions
- RNG: critics call it excessive and unfair while other reviewers argue the complaint is overstated and that knowledge and planning dominate outcomes
- Pigment mechanic: loved by many as the heart of the game, called annoying or agency-removing by others
- Whether it is truly a roguelike: one reviewer argues it is not a roguelike at all, and another says it should not have been one, while many others name it a favourite of the genre
- Story after the first win: praised by some, but one reviewer felt it fades after the first successful run on each difficulty
Repetition and friction
- Combat can be slow and methodical because losing HP is costly, so players feel they must be careful in every encounter
- Being 'pigment-screwed' (missing or overflowing colours) is compared by reviewers to mana screw in Magic, which makes some fights feel low-agency
- Hard-mode bosses are criticized as unforgiving, with healing transformations, repeated spawns and one-shot moves that can drag fights out (one review cites about 25 minutes on a single boss)
- Needing to read and memorise many enemy abilities and passives before each fight overwhelms impatient players
- Repeated runs through the same three zones feel repetitive to some, with less novelty after the first clear
Hoped-for improvements
- Reduce or give players more control over RNG (party selection, random skill assignment, coin-flip movement)
- Give characters more moves and more meaningful equipment or build customization so pigment restrictions feel less punishing
- More zones, routes and variety, with some fans explicitly asking for a larger sequel with more than three routes
- Add Steam Cloud saves (the store page lists none) and let the tutorial be saved or resumed mid-way
- Make normal fights less trivial on hard mode and strengthen meta-progression, since some players feel their team does not grow across runs
- Clearer onboarding and in-game explanation of statuses and enemy abilities, since many reviewers say it is confusing until it clicks
Released on Steam on Dec 17, 2021 (Windows and Linux, no Mac or console versions listed) at $19.99, and it has remained at Overwhelmingly Positive. Metacritic lists only 7 user ratings and no critic reviews, so critic coverage is essentially absent and the game's profile is built by word of mouth and Steam reviews. Steam reviewers say the developers were still adding free content about five years after release, and the Workshop mod scene (with a legacy-version beta branch for older mods) is a major reason veterans keep playing. Some players say it is popular with deep-playtime fans but a love-or-hate game, pointing to a low achievement-completion rate for the tutorial. Note: web search was unavailable (session budget exhausted), so no outlet reviews or Reddit threads were read.
Community sources
- Local file of top helpful positive and negative English Steam reviews (18 positive, 15 negative) ↗
- Local Steam metadata: release date, developers, price, review counts, tags, owners estimate, revenue estimate ↗
- Steam store page: description, tags, review summary, platforms, soundtrack DLC ↗
- Metacritic game page: no critic score (tbd), user score 9.1 from 7 ratings ↗
- Three Metacritic user reviews (9, 7, 8) praising uniqueness, noting repetition across three stages ↗
- Boxleiter-method estimate of gross and net Steam revenue ↗
- Modding wiki: 40+ Workshop mods, legacy-version mods, BrutalAPI, Discord modding channel ↗
- Community wiki homepage: sections on characters, enemies, bosses, items, changelog and modding ↗
- OpenCritic search fetch: no game data returned, so opencritic recorded as null ↗
Archived creator commentary 1
Third-party summaries based on automatic captions may contain transcription or interpretation errors.
Tier list Part 5 (2026)
Brutal Orchestra is a turn-based, positioning-focused tragedy game where a dead protagonist travels through a weird in-between realm with a party of misfits. He loves its disturbing, distinct vibe, art, music and highly unique colored-pigment combat, and he played through to the true final boss. His main complaints are that the roguelike layer is minor, abilities and items barely change between runs, and unlocks come too slowly. He places it in low A tier.
What the creator praises
- Extremely distinct art style, music and disturbing overall vibe
- Very unique gameplay built on colored pigment mana and overflow damage
- Strong emphasis on positioning for both attacks and evading, with depth despite simple abilities
- Great character variety, with characters that play drastically differently
- New enemies, biomes and bosses with fresh mechanics keep appearing and are a blast
- Dark, insulting story and plenty of content
Issues raised by the creator
- Roguelike elements are quite minor, so runs get repetitive
- Character abilities are fixed per run and can be upgraded but not changed; items are limited (about one per character) and often uninteresting
- Protagonist must always be on the team, limiting team freedom
- Unlocks of new characters and side quests come too late; meta-progression pacing is slow
- Random enemy attack directions feel out of place in a planning-heavy game
- Few rewards beyond limited money; full party conflicts with keeping open space to evade
Design observations
- Pigment/mana system where overflow causes damage, with very few comparable mechanics elsewhere
- Tension between a full team and open tiles for dodging forces a meaningful choice
- Enemy attacks telegraph direction so encounters can be planned like a puzzle
