I got too greedy. My clone marines had purged the xeno hive, taking minimal damage, and were ready to extract. But as a faceless desk jockey working for a corporation in a grim capitalist retro-future, I wouldn't let them. No, not when there was more loot to be found.
On the bulbous screen of my monitor, I could see some supplies that had gone unpilfered. I sent Hicks—yes, Xenopurge wears its love of Aliens proudly—inside the small room to snatch it, while Morse provided cover, tapping away at my hotkeys to swiftly give them their orders.
Morse got to the door outside the extraction point. Then the red dot appeared. Suddenly it launched itself at Morse—just a subtle movement and change in speed, but somehow still so evocative.
For a few seconds, the little red dot and Morse, represented by "M1" on my screen, tangoed, chipping away at each other's health bars. From the comm, I could hear the screams and grunts of a dying soldier. And then there was no more Morse. Hicks was still kicking, though, and made quick work of his fallen comrade's killer. A moment of celebration! And then more death, as two xenos cornered the poor clone.
The run was over.
Without a license, without any flash, with only basic but surprisingly effective art, Traptics' Xenopurge cuts to the heart of Aliens. It's tense, claustrophobic and everyone is probably going to die. It's great!
Rather than being in direct control of a squad of Colonial Marines, à la Aliens: Dark Descent, you are an operator nestled away in some secret location, watching events play out on your retro-futuristic hardware, where buildings are just simple lines, your troops are letters and numbers, and the aliens are wee dots.
Each member of your squad has a simple set of behaviours, which can be upgraded for a cost, determining how they'll act in combat. Maybe they'll shoot at the nearest enemy, locking it down so a tankier comrade can charge in and start dealing melee damage; maybe they'll focus on keeping distance between them and the threat, backing away while filling them with hot lead.
They will do this without your prompting, though I don't really feel like that merits being called a "tactical auto-battler". Yes, technically they attack automatically, but leaving them to their own devices is almost certainly going to end with four dead clones. You might not be able to control them directly, but through the orders system you still have a lot of hands-on influence.
By default, your clones will perform recon, slowly checking out every room and, if they encounter an alien, getting into a fight. But you'll also want them to loot supplies, intel and samples; plonk down mines and turrets; group or split up; flood their veins with delicious stims; or focus on their objectives.
As you work through sectors in the roguelike structure popularised by FTL, following different paths littered with nodes that contain specific challenges or upgrade opportunities, your tiny squad will grow in both size and effectiveness. With new equipment comes new tactics, new ways to order your pals around, towards either victory or death.
Right off the bat there are some obvious, broad synergies. When I just had Morse and Hicks, they served as a tank and ranged DPS. Morse would charge in, his little icon bumping into the red dots, while Hicks would stand back and use his superior ranged accuracy to whittle the dot's health down.
These roles can be further refined through logic upgrades and new gear, though. Stick a powerclaw on Morse, for instance, and his strength increases, but more importantly it gives his allies a ranged accuracy bonus. Meanwhile, upgrading his combat logic from Charge, which gives him a speed boost as he hurtles towards enemies, to Run 'n' Gun, which allows him to shoot as he closes in, gives him a lot more damage potential.
And the more options you have, the more stressful it is to command your squad. And let me tell you, it starts off stressful enough. I hope there's good air conditioning in your operator room, because this game is gonna make you sweat.
See, everything is handled by your keyboard—mice don't exist in this retro-futuristic dystopia—either by using the arrow keys, enter and backspace, or by using hotkeys. So if I want Hicks to snatch some intel, it's 2 to select Collect, 1 to select Hicks, and then, if there's only one visible thing to pick up on the screen, 1 to select the intel.
That sounds pretty simple when it's laid out like this. But if Morse is hacking away at a hive while aliens surround him, and Pierce is hustling up the corridor, being chased by a trio of biological horrors, trying to remember the right sequence of buttons to get Hicks to pick up some documents can become a nightmare.
To be clear: this rules.
Being forced to navigate a purposefully clunky interface makes you feel as stressed as the clones you're commanding. Even though you're stuck behind a desk, staring at a completely abstract rendering of the battlefield, you're still able to drown in all that tension.
This also makes it feel so damn good when things just click. When your muscle memory kicks in and you're tapping out commands like a pro, remaining cool under pressure, getting that VIP or those samples to the extraction point, hoovering up all the loot, keeping everyone alive, even as all Hell breaks loose.
And trust me, it will. The longer you stay in these brief missions, the more trouble the aliens will give you. As I learned early on, any deviations from the objective can risk everything, as the drip of alien adversaries becomes a tide, stalking, charging and spitting at you. And just like Aliens, you don't really know what you're getting into when you see that intimidating little dot. How is it going to act? What killing tools does it have at its disposal? How quickly will you need to run away?
It's a good idea, then, to take routes through the sectors that will let you invest in your clones' speed. Every little helps, as your squad starts off as ponderously slow—a state of affairs that, granted, does ramp up the tension.
Briskness is a virtue. And you can also get plenty done in a short space of time. You can finish a run, clearing out an alien-infested sector, in an hour or less. And each mission is measured in minutes. It is a fraught, stressful game that's full of perfect places to take a break. To recover from the trauma of losing another squad.
Oh yeah, and when the stress gets too much for you, you can step away from your desk, grab a coffee, check your emails and fiddle with the mood lighting in first-person sections that remind you that you're all alone, hiding in a dark room, sending clones to their deaths.
It's incredibly cheery stuff.
But this isn't a game for masochists. The roguelike framework can be punishing, but it's also fairly generous. If a clone is KiA, you'll get a replacement and it'll only cost you some of your earnings. To lose a run, everyone needs to die in a single mission. And there's meta progression, naturally, so even if you do lose a run, you'll unlock new toys to play with just by hopping into a fixed number of missions with specific equipment.
This is how we end the alien threat. Watching our squads die, dusting ourselves off, and getting back to work, stronger and wiser.
1. Best gaming laptop: Razer Blade 16
2. Best gaming PC: HP Omen 35L
3. Best handheld gaming PC: Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed.
4. Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT
5. Best VR headset: Meta Quest 3
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