"We won't regret this."
"You've died. Don't worry, it happens to the best of us. This is Purgatory. You will never escape this place. Someday soon, the man that killed you will die. And like you he will arrive bewildered and confused. Cooperate with me and I will ensure you exact brutal revenge... the moment he arrives!"
— Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch's Brutal Orchestra, or simply Brutal Orchestra, is a turn-based Roguelike developed by Talia bob Mair and Nicolás Delgado and published by Hellbent Games. It was released on December 17, 2021.
Nowak is a dead man entering Purgatory. He is met by the demon Bosch, who tells him that the man who killed him will die soon as well and offers to help him get revenge when the moment comes. For want of anything better to do, Nowak takes the deal, and the duo sets out on a quest across the afterlife to reach the killer. Many strange, horrific foes stand in their way, but many allies await them as well, some just as strange and horrific.
This game provides examples of:
- Alien Blood: Rather than blood, everything in Purgatory bleeds "pigment," which comes in four different colors (red, blue, yellow, and purple).
- All There in the Manual: Certain lore details such as the personalities and relationships between the Fools are catalogued on the Brutal Orchestra Wiki,
which Mair regularly edits. - Arc Words: "Let's try this again," the words Bosch says at the end of each run.
- Autobots, Rock Out!: The final area, the Garden has the tracks "God of Gametes (Zeitgeist Theme)" and the Osman Sinnoks themes, but especially when they split.
- Big "NO!": At the tail end of Bronzo's quest, after Nowak gives Bronzo a cumulative total of four-hundred and seventy-seven coins, Bosch does this after Bronzo asks Nowak for one-thousand coins, which leads into a boss fight with "Bronzo the Bastard."
- Bittersweet Ending: After beating the Garden, Nowak and Bosch are confronted with the reality that they've reached the end and Nowak is still dying. Nowak decides to use the blood from his wounds to paint a picture on the wall; Bosch tells him that the rain will wash the picture away and no one will see it, but Nowak isn't deterred because "everyone who needs to see it is already here." After finishing the picture, darkness closes in on Nowak's dying body, and Nowak and Bosch shrink into nothingness. Bosch expresses a desire to "do this again sometime," which Nowak agrees he'd like.
- Blob Monster: Bosch is a pillar of oil with a skull for a head.
- Body Horror: Given the title, it should go without saying.
- Many of the playable characters are just as unpleasant to look at as the enemies. Hans and Leviat are both weird flesh creatures, Clive's skin is blood-red and veiny, Griffin is horrifically disfigured under his bandages, and Agon is holding his severed head in his hands.
- The Music Men are humanoids with giant red tumors covering their heads. If allowed to use the ability Feel the Rhythm, the tumor explodes and they transform into monsters that look like instruments made of human anatomy.
- Maniskins have their heads, arms, and feet severed and their stomachs cut open, with some kind of eye peering out through the wound. Once slain, a Maniskin has the chance to decay into an Inner Child, revealing the being inside it... and it's actually kind of cute, but now the Maniskin's upper body is gone except for a flopping spinal cord.
- One of the game's final bosses is a Sequential Boss. Specifically, after defeating Osman Sinnoks, his body rapidly comes apart before exploding into a shower of blood and gore. He then reemerges as Osman and Sinnoks, a pair of twitching, horrifically-mutilated men with the right and left side of their bodies respectively torn wide open.
- Chain Lethality Enabler: Killing an enemy causes Nowak to gain the "Focused" status effect, which increases his attack power by a certain amount (either a flat two points or a 50% boost depending on how much health the target has) until he takes damage.
- Cherry Tapping: The game features an achievement for finishing a boss with the basic Slap attack, as well as another for doing the same to all of them.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. Every boss is vulnerable to negative status effects, and some even inflict them on themselves.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: In the true ending, Nowak uses the blood from his head wound to make a painting on the wall next to him.
- Creepy Jazz Music: Jazz plays while fighting Music Men. If one is allowed to use Feel the Rhythm, then whatever instrument their new form resembles is added to the song.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff:
- Scars increase all the damage a character takes by one. Unlike most status effects, they stack - three scars means a character will take three extra damage from any given source, and so on.
- A character in the Spotlight deals double damage, but takes double damage as well.
- Parasitism is a mechanic exclusive to Longliver that is activated by using "Gently Eviscerate." Longliver enters the opposing enemy and afflicts the status, causing the parasitized enemy to take 5% additional damage for each of Longliver's remaining hit points. The downside is that Longliver takes damage from these attacks as well (excluding the bonus from Parasitism), which reduces his hit points and the damage bonus in turn. To help balance this, Longliver also siphons 0-3 HP from the parasitized enemy every turn.
- Dead to Begin With: The premise of the game is that Nowak has died and he is in purgatory. The same is true for all of the potential party members.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even Bosch is unsettled by some of the more off-putting things Nowak encounters in his journey throughout Purgatory. Examples include Splig's Ax-Crazy red half and watching Thype eat the four stones upon recruitment.
- Fan Disservice:
- Some attack animations involve the enemy blowing a kiss at the target. None of the enemies in Brutal Orchestra are things anyone would want to receive sexual attention from.
- The Fla Ming Goa is a blue eel-like creature inhabiting a seemingly female corpse with flopping breasts and severed extremities.
- In His Image and In Her Image are naked male and female humans with floating severed heads and creepy Eyeless Faces. If given the chance, the two enemies can fuse together into the Zeitgeist, a giant, pulsating blob of flesh with limbs unnaturally scattered across its body and some sort of bleeding orifice facing the player.
- For the Evulz: Bosch's motivation for helping Nowak hunt down his killer, so it seems.Nowak: What do you get out of this?Bosch: Heh. Heh. Heh. Nothing! But that is more than enough.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: After sparing This Pitiful Corpse, Bosch goes berserk and kills Nowak, bringing the player to the title screen. Attempting to continue the game has him do it again four more times before eventually calming down and allowing the player to keep playing.
- Freudian Trio: With Bosch as the Id, Nowak as the Superego, and This Pitiful Corpse as the ego.
- Joke Character: Arnold. His character title is "the Failure," and all of his abilities have self-deprecating names which, unlike other abilities which become more flattering as the character ranks up, merely become less insulting. His gimmick is that his abilities make each other more powerful with every use, which could theoretically turn him into a Lethal Joke Character, but even setting aside the fact that taking any damage makes him lose all the buffs, this is still horribly inefficient.
- Added in the Exquisite Corpse update is Mung, a party member somehow even worse than Arnold. Mung has two moves, "Nibble" and "Sob." Nibble deals one damage to an opposing enemy, and Sob creates one blue pigment. That's it. While you can find limited use for the latter move in parties that rely on blue pigment, this is arguably Mung's only useful ability. Mung is not allowed to level up, meaning his moves never develop and he remains at a pathetic 6 HP throughout the entire run. Worse yet? Mung has unlocks for both of the final bosses. He's quite fun.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Most of the enemies explode into chunks of flesh when defeated.
- Malevolent Masked Men: Roids is a wrestler wearing a bizarre white mask with a Wicked Heart Symbol on the mouth area.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Much of Bosch's dialogue is him verbally abusing Nowak, making creepy comments, or threatening to kill someone. After all, he is the embodiment, among other things, of Nowak's self-hatred and mental instabilities.
- Necessary Drawback: Most of the equippable items have some kind of drawback necessitating they be used with care, even if it isn't immediately obvious (for example, the RAM! causes the holder to deal 5 damage to the enemy in front of them. This might sound unambiguously good, except that it can cause enemies with Slippery to move out of the range of the user's actual attack).
- Non-Standard Game Over: Obeying Bosch and killing This Pitiful Corpse results in a bizarre ending where Nowak stomps on the dying man's head, revealing that they are one and the same. Bosch expresses glee that he "actually did it," and Nowak turns to find his companions being swallowed by black tar. Bosch assures him that none of it is real, and neither is he, as he melts away. As the camera slowly zooms away from Nowak and the corpse, Bosch's disembodied voice makes the bizarre declaration that he's "not going anywhere" before they fade into nothing.
- Off with His Head!: A skeleton wrestler with his head torn off can be seen in the background of Roids' arena.
- One-Hit Kill: There are a few moves that bosses (and a select few enemies) can utilize that will instantly kill one of your party members. Straightforward examples include Trigger Fingers' "Headshot," Osman Sinnoks' "Mortal Horizon," and Heaven's "Come Home." There's also Giggling Minister's "Mind Games," though it only has a 1/8 chance to trigger.
- Overly Long Scream: When Agon is first encountered, he spends four screen-filling text boxes doing nothing but screaming in terror before calming down and joining the party (although not without getting one last little scream out of his system first).
- Parasite Zombie: The fish in the Far Shore can inhabit corpses and walk around in them.
- Perfection Is Impossible: Nowak learns this lesson by the end of the game. During his life, Nowak was an artist inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and a perfectionist. It's implied that his inability to achieve perfection in his art led to him committing suicide.
- Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Osman Sinnoks, one of the game's potential Final Bosses, gives one just before you fight him.Osman Sinnoks: If you will not walk. I will carry you. And if you struggle... I will parade your corpse... into the depth of that Beast Machine. Breathe deep. This you will not forget.
- Purple Is Powerful: Portals that lead to boss fights are represented by the color purple.
- Purgatory: The setting of the game. Nowak and company travel through a shoreline surrounding a great sea, a rainy city under the watchful eye of the Ungod, and a vast, black-and-white landscape that reflects one's deepest fears and aspirations. For Nowak, this manifests as the various creatures occupying "The Garden of Earthly Delights," a painting made by Hieronymus Bosch.
- Russian Reversal: During the conversation with the sombrero-wearing skeleton, it's revealed that Nowak worked as a fish gutter while he was alive. While doing this, he would have intrusive thoughts of the fish gutting him alive instead.
- Save Scumming: During any given fight, you can pause the game, exit, and return to directly before the beginning of the fight. This allows you to readjust your party, change items, and it brings back any party members that died during that fight. Subverted in that all party members will retain the hit points they had when the player quit the fight, meaning any damage taken during combat will remain. For dead party members, this means that they come back with one hit point.
- Sheathe Your Sword: You unlock Hard Mode and the path to the true ending by disobeying Bosch's commands to kill This Pitiful Corpse and letting him survive for two turns.
- Tastes Like Purple: A skeleton in the area where you recruit Dimitri speculates that fire tastes like "butter and phlogiston" (a nonexistent element once theorized to be what makes flammable substances flammable).
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Trigger Fingers' One-Hit Kill move Headshot does 1945 points of damage in a game where a more durable character might have around 25 hit points.
- Sparing This Pitiful Corpse prompts an enraged Bosch to hit Nowak with an outrageous 13 billion points of damage.
- Title Drop: Played for Laughs at the end of the boss fight against Bronzo the Bastard, where Bronzo breaks the fourth wall and asks a perplexed Nowak to look directly at the player and say "This really is the Brutal Orchestra." Nowak obliges.Bronzo: Nowak, can you do something for Bronzo?Nowak: Sure?Bronzo: Can you look at that spot *Bronzo points at the player* and say "This really is the Brutal Orchestra."Nowak: ...Nowak: This really is the Brutal Orchestra.Bronzo: Heh.
- Top-Heavy Guy: Roids, one of the Far Shore's bosses, is a hulking wrestler with this kind of build.
- The Vitruvian Pose: The animation when a Music Man uses Feel the Rhythm shows it in one of these. This is then followed by the Music Man turning upside down before the tumor covering its head explodes, filling the circle with blood.
- Unfinished Business: Bosch informs Nowak that he was murdered, and offers to help him take revenge upon his murderer, which Nowak accepts. This murderer is none other than Nowak himself.
- Weaponized Offspring: The Mungling Mud Lung, which is a pair of Mungs occupying a corpse, can "mungle" to create a baby Mungie, which then joins the fight.
- Weird Moon: Some kind of undulating, pearl-like moon can be seen in the background of the Far Shore. After completing Ichor's quest, this changes into a fetus.
- Zero-Effort Boss: This Pitiful Corpse, Nowak's "murderer" fought following the Orpheum, is a helpless dying man who can't do anything except damage his own already pathetic health.
