TERMCOM: An ASCII X-COM Demake

🌐 English · 🇪🇸 Español · 🇫🇷 Français · 🇵🇹 Português · 🇷🇺 Русский · 🇨🇳 中文 · 🇯🇵 日本語 · 🇰🇷 한국어

A roguelike-ified demake of X-COM: UFO Defense (1994, MicroProse) rendered entirely in coloured ASCII on a terminal. Written in Go with tcell. It brings the classic alien invasion strategy experience to your terminal. It features a complete implementation of all gameplay loops: the Geoscape (global strategy), Base management, and the tactical Battlescape.

Features

• Geoscape - Real-time world map with time compression, UFO tracking, interceptor launch.
• Battlescape - Turn-based tactical combat with Time Units, cover, line-of-sight.
• Base Management - Build facilities, hire soldiers, equip squad.
• Research & Manufacturing - Unlock alien tech, build plasma rifles and power suits.
• Alien AI - Patrol, seek, attack, flee, flank, and retreat behaviors.
• Procedurally Generated Aliens - A roster of aliens is generated at the start of each campaign, each with unique abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and weapons.
• Destructible Terrain - Grenades destroy walls, trees, and rocks, leaving rubble.
• Dynamic VFX - Particle explosions, screen shake, rubble physics, night lighting.

Requirements

Tip

The below is for building from the source code. If you just want to play, you can download the game binaries from here.

• Go 1.25+
• Terminal with Unicode support (for box-drawing characters)

Terminal Font Troubleshooting

Termcom makes heavy use of extended Unicode characters (Runes, Geometrics, and Ethiopic symbols) to render aliens and tactical maps. Most devices should support the characters we use, but if you launch the game natively in your terminal and see overlapping characters, weird spacing, or empty boxes (▯) instead of aliens, your OS is missing the required fallback fonts.

🐧 Linux

To fix this on Ubuntu/Debian, install the Noto Fonts and Unifont fallback packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install fonts-noto fonts-unifont

For Arch Linux users:

sudo pacman -S noto-fonts unifont

For Fedora users:

sudo dnf install google-noto-sans-fonts unifont-fonts

🍏 macOS

The default Terminal.app on macOS can sometimes struggle with grid alignment or incorrectly render symbols as double-width emojis.

For the best experience, we highly recommend using iTerm2. If you are missing characters, you can install GNU Unifont via Homebrew:

brew install --cask font-gnu-unifont

• To fix alignment in iTerm2: Go to Settings > Profiles > Text, check the box for "Use a different font for non-ASCII text", and set that secondary font to Unifont.

🪟 Windows

Do not use the legacy command prompt (cmd.exe) or the old blue PowerShell window, as their Unicode and color support is extremely limited.

1. Use Windows Terminal (Included by default in Windows 11, available in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10).
2. If you see empty boxes ▯, your system's default font lacks the required symbols.
3. Download and install a robust, high-compatibility font like GNU Unifont or Noto Sans Mono.
4. Open Windows Terminal settings (Ctrl + ,), go to Profiles > Defaults > Appearance, and change the Font face to your newly installed font.

Build & Run

Terminal Version

go run ./cmd/termcom

Or build a binary:

go build -o termcom ./cmd/termcom
./termcom

Browser Version (WASM)

Note

The WASM version renders natively in the browser without a Go backend server.

The WASM version compiles the Go game core to WebAssembly and renders directly in the browser via an HTML Canvas renderer with true-color ANSI support.

Quick start:

# Build WASM binary
cd cmd/termcom_wasm
GOOS=js GOARCH=wasm go build -o ../../web_wasm/termcom.wasm .

# Serve locally
cd web_wasm
python -m http.server 8080

Or use the build script:

./scripts/build_wasm.sh    # Linux/macOS
.\scripts\build_wasm.ps1   # Windows

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Features:

• Native browser rendering (no backend server required)
• Canvas-based character grid with true-color ANSI RGB support
• Differential rendering (only changed cells are repainted)
• Screen shake effects via CSS transforms
• Auto-sized font (override with ?font=FontName URL parameter)
• Mobile touch support (tap to click, long-press for right-click, drag to scroll)
• Responsive layout for narrow screens (cols < 100)

Build requirements:

• Go 1.25+ (with GOOS=js GOARCH=wasm support)
• wasm_exec.js from your Go installation ($(go env GOROOT)/misc/wasm/wasm_exec.js)
• Data files (data/, maps/) are embedded at build time

Android Native (Experimental)

Caution

The Android version is experimental and may have limited functionality compared to the terminal version.

The Android port compiles the Go game core into a native .aar library via gomobile, rendered as a character grid on a SurfaceView with full touch input and audio.

Prerequisites:

• Go 1.25+
• Android SDK + NDK (API 21+)
• Gradle 8.2 (for local APK builds)
• gomobile:

  go install golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile@latest
  gomobile init

Build the game library:

make android-aar

This writes android/app/libs/termcom.aar.

Build an APK (CI / GitHub Actions):

A .github/workflows/android-release.yml workflow automatically builds a signed release APK (or debug APK) on push to mobile/main/master and on v* tags. Debug APKs are produced from any push; tag a release (v*) to publish a signed APK as a GitHub Release. Set these repository secrets for signed releases: ANDROID_KEYSTORE_BASE64, ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, ANDROID_KEY_ALIAS, ANDROID_KEY_PASSWORD.

Build an APK locally:

make android-aar                                  # step 1: Go .aar
cd android && gradle assembleDebug               # step 2: APK → app/build/outputs/apk/debug/
# or open android/ in Android Studio and Run

Install with adb install android/app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk.

Controls:

• Tap to click / select / move
• Long-press (500ms) for right-click / cancel; vibration on long-press
• Drag to scroll
• Hardware keyboard (DPAD, Enter, Escape, F-keys) supported

Project Structure

See the AGENTS file for architecture details.

License

MIT, see LICENSE file.

Note

AI Usage Disclaimer: AI was used in this project to generate and update the translations to French, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. No audio or images were generated via AI (the game does not use any, anyway - its all terminal based!)