Hi everyone!

I’m a solo developer working on Tower of Scherbenmark, a dark turn-based ASCII dungeon crawler roguelike set in a decaying fantasy world filled with monsters, traps, secrets and strange magic.

The game’s Steam demo is now live, and I’d love to hear what you think and don't forget to wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972610/Tower_of_Scherbenmark/

The game features:

• Turn-based dungeon crawling
• Melee combat and magic
• Procedurally generated runs
• Loot, chests, traps, secrets, and mimics
• Permanent Legacy Perks between runs
• Shard Mutations that change how each run plays
• A dark fantasy story told through journals and discoveries

I’m currently continuing to work on balancing, maybe additional mutations and perks, and improvements based on player feedback.

If you try the demo, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience, especially what you enjoyed, what felt confusing, and how the difficulty felt.

You can also join the Discord server here:

https://discord.gg/Z6MSezS

Thanks for taking a look!

Hi everyone!

I’m a solo developer working on Tower of Scherbenmark, a dark turn-based ASCII roguelike set in a decaying fantasy world filled with monsters, traps, secrets and strange magic.

The game’s Steam demo is now live, and I’d love to hear what you think:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4972610/Tower_of_Scherbenmark/

The game features:

• Turn-based dungeon crawling
• Melee combat and magic
• Procedurally generated runs
• Loot, chests, traps, secrets, and mimics
• Permanent Legacy Perks between runs
• Shard Mutations that change how each run plays
• A dark fantasy story told through journals and discoveries

I’m currently continuing to work on balancing, maybe additional mutations and perks, and improvements based on player feedback.

If you try the demo, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience, especially what you enjoyed, what felt confusing, and how the difficulty felt.

You can also join the Discord server here:

https://discord.gg/Z6MSezS

Thanks for taking a look!

Hey everyone!

For the past few months, I’ve been working on Tower of Scherbenmark, a turn-based, dark-fantasy ASCII roguelike RPG set in a fractured world.

I recently made a massive architectural decision: I ported the entire game from Haxe/Heaps.io to Godot.

While Haxe is wonderful, moving to Godot has allowed me to vastly improve the UI, overhaul the game's presentation, and implement much better accessibility and scaling options. I wanted to share a few side-by-side screenshots showing the evolution of the game’s look and feel.

The Screenshots (In Order)

The first 4 screnshots are from Haxe/Heaps. After that the next 4 images are from the Godot version

Why the switch?

Apart from development workflow improvements, Godot gave me the flexibility to build a much cleaner rendering pipeline. I was able to:

• Improve ASCII readability and scaling dramatically.
• Better integrate the optional glyph sprites for players who prefer a visual hybrid over pure text.
• Upgrade the UI to support smoother message logs, customized color themes, and better screen-shake/motion-reduction toggles.

I’d love your honest feedback!

Since I'm actively working towards polishing this for a Steam release, I'd highly appreciate your thoughts on the visual updates:

1. Readability: How readable does the text/ASCII layout feel to you in the new Godot version?
2. ASCII vs. Glyphs: Do you prefer the pure retro ASCII look, or do the optional glyph sprites hit the sweet spot for you?
3. Atmosphere: Does the UI still carry that cold, dark-fantasy "shattered world" vibe?

If you want to check out the project, the demo is currently live on Itch.io (where I also wrote a detailed devlog about the porting process if you are interested in the technical hurdles!) .

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and answering any questions about the porting process!

Hey everyone!

For the past few months, I’ve been working on Tower of Scherbenmark, a turn-based, dark-fantasy ASCII roguelike RPG set in a fractured world.

I recently made a massive architectural decision: I ported the entire game from Haxe/Heaps.io to Godot.

While Haxe is wonderful, moving to Godot has allowed me to vastly improve the UI, overhaul the game's presentation, and implement much better accessibility and scaling options. I wanted to share a few side-by-side screenshots showing the evolution of the game’s look and feel.

The Screenshots (In Order)

The first 4 screnshots are from Haxe/Heaps. After that the next 4 images are from the Godot version

Why the switch?

Apart from development workflow improvements, Godot gave me the flexibility to build a much cleaner rendering pipeline. I was able to:

• Improve ASCII readability and scaling dramatically.
• Better integrate the optional glyph sprites for players who prefer a visual hybrid over pure text.
• Upgrade the UI to support smoother message logs, customized color themes, and better screen-shake/motion-reduction toggles.

I’d love your honest feedback!

Since I'm actively working towards polishing this for a Steam release, I'd highly appreciate your thoughts on the visual updates:

1. Readability: How readable does the text/ASCII layout feel to you in the new Godot version?
2. ASCII vs. Glyphs: Do you prefer the pure retro ASCII look, or do the optional glyph sprites hit the sweet spot for you?
3. Atmosphere: Does the UI still carry that cold, dark-fantasy "shattered world" vibe?

If you want to check out the project, the demo is currently live on Itch.io (where I also wrote a detailed devlog about the porting process if you are interested in the technical hurdles!) .

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and answering any questions about the porting process!

Hi everyone,

I just released the first native Windows and Linux beta builds of Tower of Scherbenmark, a turn-based ASCII roguelike RPG set in the fractured dark-fantasy world of Mornhollow.

A free demo is available here:

https://bernhardp.itch.io/tower-of-scherbenmark

About the game:

Scherbenmark is a broken domain of floating islands, ruined cities, mana rifts, and time-scarred places. You descend into an old research spire after your sister Mara disappears inside with a group of rift scholars and sellswords. Only her satchel returns, along with one warning:

Do not trust the echo of a spell.

The current early access build includes:

• Turn-based dungeon exploration
• ASCII presentation with optional glyph sprites
• Melee combat and ranged enemy magic
• Loot, weapons, armor, potions, and equipment bonuses
• Chests, mimic chests, furniture, riddles, traps, and secrets
• Journal entries and lore fragments
• Autosaves, save/load support, and persistent settings
• Keyboard, mouse, and controller support
• Native Windows and Linux beta builds

The game is still in active development, so I’m looking for feedback on difficulty, readability, controls, dungeon pacing, bugs, and ideas for enemies, items, riddles, traps, or lore.

If you try the demo, feel free to post feedback or bug reports on the game page. I’m especially interested in whether the native builds work well on different systems.

Thanks for taking a look!