New release: Hieroglyphika

Markus Hanka writes in to announce the release of Hieroglyphika, a graphical roguelike which uses pictograms in lieu of ASCII text or representational graphics.

The premise:

Hieroglyphika is a roguelike game completely without text but with pictograms.

You get lost in an ancient egyptian pyramid buried deep under the sand of the desert and full of traps and monstrous beings. Decrypt hieroglyphs to learn spells and to understand the magical nature of artifacts.

Hieroglyphika has a striking visual style, though with the exception of the inventory screen, I confess that I don’t find most of the pictograms being used here all that dramatically different from the icons that appear in most modern graphical roguelikes. Watch the release trailer and judge for yourself:

The more pertinent aspect that may set Hieroglyphika apart is the fact that it eschews all text, leaving you to work out the game’s mechanics on your own. I am, I confess, at least a little bit intrigued by this.

You can snag Hieroglyphika for $9.99 on Steam. Windows only.