PURGE://
THE GRID IS DYING. DEFEND IT.
PURGE:// is a persistent multiplayer game with exactly one world. Not one per player. Not one per server. One.
Every person who presses play - here on itch, on the web, on a phone at a bus stop - is a defender of the same shared grid. And the grid is being eaten by the Blight: a corruption that spreads in real time, twenty-four hours a day, whether anyone is watching or not.
Close the tab. Sleep. Come back tomorrow. The world you return to is whatever the other defenders did - or failed to do - while you were gone.
HOW IT WORKS
☣ Tap corruption to purge it. Every purge costs energy. Energy refills on its own, even while you're away - and your tank grows if you return daily.
✦ Level up to unlock six abilities. Auto-cleansing Purifiers at level 2. Pulse. Strike. Chain. And at level 25, Cataclysm.
♥ Hunt the Corruption Hearts. They drive the spread, they regenerate, and they have a damage limit per cycle - meaning no player can kill one alone. You need a swarm. This is not a metaphor: cooperation is mechanically mandatory.
⚑ Coordinate with flags. Press F, drop an emote ping on the map - "danger", "strike here", "need help" - and every defender online sees it instantly.
WAVES
Fully restore the grid and the entire community clears the wave - together, once, forever. Each wave is meaner. Each wave needs more defenders. Clear enough of them and the grid itself physically expands, from ~2,800 nodes to more than 25,000, growing with its population.
Lose - let corruption consume everything - and the world falls back a wave. It will be in the log. Everyone will know.
A LIVE WORLD, HONESTLY
- Every defender on the leaderboard is a real person, acting now or recently.
- Waves cleared are historical events. You were there, or you weren't.
- The world doesn't pause. Upon launch, the grid was 80% consumed in an afternoon - not by an attack, but by absence.
No download. No signup. Pick a codename and you're defending inside ten seconds - a short training mission teaches you everything. Works on desktop (keys 1–6 for abilities, F to flag) and mobile (tap, pinch, zoom).
The Blight never sleeps. The grid needs bodies.
ENTER THE GRID ▸
Development log
- Hearts Get Serious2 hours ago
- The Hearts Update1 day ago
- Burn It Down2 days ago
- Speak, Cheer, and Swarm - comms + Heart swarming update2 days ago
Comments
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Hey defenders, I'm aware of a server issue that I'm working now to resolve. Hope to be back up and running shortly. Apologies for the downtime.
Aww, server down just as we almost finished wave 20. Bummer.
Fun, but i wish levels would allow to make more impact. The 24 level guy was barely scratching the surface on an overrun map. Would love to have an oportunity to upgrade the skills and have a bigger energy pool. Right now its barely a minute before you max out on energy and can only push two buttons before getting distracted for 10 minutes again.
Apologies, just working on getting it back up now, it should persist the progress.
Also, thanks for the feedback. I originally created the game as a semi-afk tab in tab out sort of game. But while playing it myself I've realised it's actually more engaging that I imagined. I agree the abilities should scale more with your level. Something I will look into.
Maybe they should scale from level and use, allowing different people to become more potent with the skill they use. Those who focus single nodes gaining damage while those who want to use pulse instead of single target gaining that. Also it seems that using purifiers limits your xp gain compared to pulse, so its better for personal progress to focus on using pulse repeatedly instead of actually progressing the wave. Purifier seems like an inhibitor so you only get so much xp from the investment.
I think semi-afk tab in tab out is still a good concept, but it's hard to play that way when you cap out in energy in 100 seconds.
At the moment i'm online alone and its just aint sustainable.
Gods have spoke and added 10 max energy to the energy pool, but as it is it just feels like this game is disrespecting my invested time.
I choose to let it burn because its impossible to hold grown like this on wave 22. There are 11 hearts and i just don't have the tools nor time to contain this.
Will be back when there's personal progression.
I've been getting 10 more maximum energy daily. I'm at 130 now.
Ah, i thought its a one time fix. Wellp. We'll see if its defendable then...
Question for the Defenders:
I’m looking for genuine feedback to help decide the future direction of Purge. Which part of the game do you find more fun or engaging?
Any thoughts on why you prefer one over the other would be really helpful.
Personally I prefer clearing the corruption. It has the same feel as a game like Powerwash Simulator.
As for fighting hearts. Unless someone is using alerts, it's tough to see which hearts are being attacked at glace without zooming in and checking the health levels of each one so see which ones were attacked recently. This really kills the vibe of attacking them.
Great feedback, thanks. Will work on highlighting which hearts are being attacked
I just find it kind of relaxing, and fun to think about what the optimal moves are. The specific actions don't really matter.
This is a message for the defenders. Developer, do not read!
Heart explosions leave a 9 by 9 gap in the corruption. We should try lining this future gap with purifiers before killing the heart some time, so we get the space for free.
I would like to be able to change my name. I regret going with the suggested name!
Understood, coming with the next update.
You can now change your name at the bottom of the Top defenders panel
still working on more substantial feedback, played yesterday had a great time. Was great for keeping front of mind active while back of mind worked out some stuff.
Super appreciate you!!
Is the server down for an update? or am I stuck on establishing a connection because of my end?
Really looking forward to your feedback, but glad you're enjoying the game!
Can't see the server going down in the logs, but I was pushing updates around that time. Apologies
I am into the concept of weird "MMO"s and I appreciate that you tried something new. I also like the Creeper games, which this is vaguely reminiscent of. But as it is, the game is way too simple to hold any interest.
I can't really care about leveling up either, since all you seem to get is abilities, and the abilities don't seem very relevant. Purge and Purifier seem to be all you need. The new Sear might be worth something. But I think you need to think about what exactly the role of the other ones is meant to be. Strike does 5 damage for 20 energy. You know what else does 5 damage for 20 energy? Using Purge 5 times.
The offline energy gain element doesn't seem very relevant when the cap is reached so quickly. At some point my cap went up from 100 to 110 though and I don't know why.
Also I don't get why the last hitter on a heart gets all the credit.
I am not sure that just adding more complexity will actually make it good, but at least it is easy to think of ways to do it. Here is some brainstorming:
This is great feedback thank you and I appreciate the honesty. I will take all your points on board this evening and give some thought as to making some changes to hold interest a bit better. Really appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed comment
The implicit beauty of this game is in finding ways to work in conjunction with strangers you can barely communicate with. Having said that, there's a Nash for a single player to reliably manage things nearly by themselves.
Pick a wall, left or right. Purifier it, top to bottom, and start walking to the far side. Slightly more complex, pick the least contaminated corner and purge it so as to build a diagonal wall of purifiers. Additional users divide the time to completion, so it scales, but one player interested enough to stay in the grind can eventually handle everything outside of the hearts themselves.
Where we're at now, the contamination is essentially everywhere, and a phalanx of purifiers is the only reasonable and intuitive tactic. We probably need more emergent behavior from the enemy to overcome this One True Way playstyle.
(I'm having fun, but I can see it getting old since I always feel at this point like I know exactly what to do.)
Is defeating the hearts even useful? It takes 4 purifiers to cancel them out, which will have to be replaced once an hour. It seems to take much more to kill them, and people have been doing it right at the start when they could be gaining the most by trying to save the uncorrupted spaces there are instead.
I'm making some balancing changes to reduce the amount of corruption on the map and make killing hearts more rewarding (including rewarding assists) and killing hearts directly reduces the spread of corruption.
Reducing the spread seems kind of irrelevant. You make a solid wall of purifiers, or the corruption gets through. The rate of corruption growth doesn't factor into it. The only thing is, if you have enough people and you're fast on a new round, slower growth might let you win the round more quickly by saving the existing uncorrupted space. But even then, if you spend time killing hearts, you give up time you could have spent walling off the uncorrupted space.
That said, it's not entirely clear the rules by which the corruption spreads. Have you played any of the Creeper World games? I'm not saying you should copy them, but it's an example of a reasonably elaborate ruleset leading to reasonably varied player choices, with a similarly amorphous enemy.
Thanks for the feedback and glad you're somewhat enjoying the game. Currently taking all of your feedback on board and refactoring the corruption spread so it can't be as easily strategized against and requires more teamplay. Just need to tweak the balancing to avoid it becoming impossible.
Not a bad game. Simple gameplay, maybe a bit slow. I can see this being fun with lots more players though
Ty for the feedback will take it on board regarding slow gameplay