The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol by hhsaez
You wake up suddenly in a small room, with the sole company of a computer asking you strange questions. Can you save yourself?
The P.U.R.G.E. Protocol is a Q&A game developed during LD39 and based on the theme "Running out of Power".



Controls
- WASD/Cursor Keys for movement
- Mouse to look around
- Left mouse button to interact with the world
Updated version!
- Fixed input errors and crashes on OSX
Links
- Windows: https://github.com/hhsaez/purgeprotocol/releases/download/v1.0.1/purgeprotocol-win.zip
- OS X: https://github.com/hhsaez/purgeprotocol/releases/download/v1.0.1/purgeprotocol-osx.zip
- Itch.io: https://hhsaez.itch.io/the-purge-protocol
- Github: https://github.com/hhsaez/purge_protocol
Ratings
| Overall | 346th | 3.297⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 506th | 2.781⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 336th | 3.078⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 597th | 2.781⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 150th | 3.734⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 147th | 3.033⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 212th | 3.242⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 80🗳️ | 83🗨️ |
here's the crashdump:
https://pastebin.com/Zu8SxsxL
It has a hacker tone, and I love it.
The death part is funny too :)
But hey, I had fun with it! Mood was good, kudos for using something else than Unity or GameMaker as many here are too. Also caught the Konami Code reference! Brings some childhood memories (and also the times Konami was actually good...)
Also I found out I'm not as stupid as I thought I am (suprisingly), which makes me happier :)
Overall cool though.
Negatives aside I did enjoy the game. Graphics are amazing and I was generally surprised when the guy was floating out of the window. That is when the theme clicked and I realized what was actually happening. I think if there was a sudden whooshing noise and your character getting pushed to the edge of the door when time is up would have had more of an emotional gut punch. I was generally panicked for the last few moments and having that kind of release would have been super satisfying. Really liked that aspect of it!
Thanks everyone for the feedback!!
Originally, I was supposed to implement puzzles too, some of them involving chess movements or dragging objects, but they didn't make the cut in the end.
It's supposed to be some kind of IQ test and I guess I got that right based on the feedback I'm getting.
Thanks for playing!
The room architecture is great and the lack of textures give it some art style. Loved the dead bodys flying on the outside.
Couldn´t beat the game for my own, cheated with the help of a seach engine, but I guess this is ok if one of the questions is refered to a cheating code itself ;-)
Sound would have added much to the mood, but this is only a drop of bitterness.
My only problem I had with the game were the pop culture questions (such as the Konami code), they really didn't fit the atmosphere or the setting of the game, and seemed out of place. I sat at the lost question for a good bit, trying to find out what made the numbers a sequence, before giving up and googling it, only to find out it was from a TV show I never watched. I'm not really sure why a ship's computer, or the people that run the ship, would care if you seen it. The question doesn't fit with the rest of the logical ones leading up to it.
In the end, it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the game too much, as everything else was done very well!
@gonutz, I'll try and upload a new windows build with 32bit support as soon as possible. Thanks
Thanks everyone for the comments! I'll be doing a postmortem shortly
I just uploaded a new version for OSX fixing input errors and crashes
Thanks everyone for playing!
During my first playthrough, because I'm an evil player I chose invalid answers on purpose, just to see what would happen... Well I wasn't disappointed. Seeing the first body through the window is pretty shocking as well, congrats for the twists :)
My main nitpicks about the game would be:
- The choice of questions (how come one's pop culture references make him a man worthy of being saved? haha)
- The happy ending, which even had the same gas as the sad one. I'm not entirely convinced ARES did not kill me despite my right answers... I understand that might be a running-out-of-time issue.
- Having at least some ambient noise for audio, optionally with beeps here and there would definitely have helped set the mood
Other than that it's a pretty original and impressive compo entry, definitely my type of game :)
EDIT: Since you've mentioned it in your postmortem, I did realize the lights got turned back on around the end. It took me a couple seconds to understand what happened but it was clear enough.
Simple and interesting enough to play few times trying to survive through the questions.
Thanks for the game! And 42.