No, this is not normal, but I have a guess--are you running on a very small laptop? If so, press F3 and switch to ASCII mode. Tiles aren't supported below 720p. Only ASCII, but the game starts in tiles mode.
This is something I apparently screwed up when I made a change the DAY before launch, so it counts as a bug.
I'll have this fixed for next release, and thank you for reporting!