In both versions of Ascii Onslaught, a rogue pilot takes aim against a seemingly endless wave of “special characters”. These include the British “pound” symbol, the copyright symbol, the “yen” symbol and plenty more. Ironically, most of the attacking symbols in the game are not part of the actual ASCII set.

The original has you in a craft built of two slash symbols and a dash (/-) and you shoot vertically while moving horizontally. The enemies fall down the screen. If you shoot one, it will travel up the screen and knock out any enemies falling directly above it.

The 3D edition has you in a striped craft of some sort and supports control via the mouse or keyboard (the letters IJKL move player 1). There are not only many more enemies in this version, but they have more styles of space ships, ie. different “characters”

Though both of them present charm and a different take on what enemy armadas can look like, neither of the games can hold much depth. The basic idea of the game is evaporated in the first few moments of play. However, that said, they are interesting shooters and present an easier challenge than some of our other shooters, for novice gamers out there and that’s always a good thing.