Walkable ASCII Cyberpunk City Prototype
Check it out. Writing something that looks a bit like a face using only a semicolon, an underscore and a caret is surprisingly charming. While my own text‑based art is limited to occasional kaomoji, I’m in awe of ASCII artists who can build entire cyberpunk cities with just symbols. A solo developer has created a walkable ASCII sci‑fi city that runs from a single HTML file, using a custom raycasting engine instead of 3D models. The engine casts rays from the camera across a grid, finds the first object each ray hits, and uses distance to calculate perspective, size, depth and occlusion. The result is flickering ASCII art that still captures the feel of a futuristic metropolis. The original prototype video has attracted over a million views, showing strong interest in visual styles beyond realistic darkness. The creator has since improved the engine and now offers a playable version on Ko‑Fi, with a higher 180 × 80 character resolution for smoother detail.
A walkable 3D ASCII city in an HTML file – now you can try it! – YouTube
Watch On Another big update to the prototype gives the buildings interiors and multiple floors, allowing you to see the ASCII city from a new perspective. Grow now! Games is far from done with the project, saying they have started thinking about implementing a dialogue system and turning the prototype into a more feature‑rich game. While still quite unique, it wouldn’t be the first game with an ASCII art style. Just to give a recent example from last year, our Josh got lost in the symbol sauce of Effulgence RPG, a turn‑based title where you turn monster parts into weapons. Grow now! The games haven’t revealed any details beyond that possible dialogue system, but I can’t wait to see them paint their little ASCII town red.
