This strategy roguelike is like trying to fight off an alien invasion with a bunch of PCs from the late 1970s

No matter how advanced PCs become, nothing will ever beat the pure, intoxicating vibes of a late 1970s computer. The text-based interface, the sickly glow, the background hum… if I’d been one of the passengers on the Nostromo, it would have taken a facehugger to get me off one of those keyboards.

Which isn’t far away from the premise of roguelike strategy game Xenopurge, in fact. Interacting with the game entirely via a selection of ancient-looking PCs, you play as the remote operator for a team of galactic marines, as they go room-to-room through derelict starships trying to fight off an alien infestation.

You can’t control your squad directly, nor can you see what they’re seeing. Instead, you watch their progress via a basic and abstract top-down display, while they automatically go about their business according to the behaviours you’ve set for them. As the mission develops, you can issue basic orders—such as telling them to group up, stop moving, or, when the mission is complete, to make their way to the extraction point.

As alien monsters flood in, as they inevitably do, this indirect management gets increasingly frantic. It’s essentially a game of navigating clunky menus while little abstract shapes move around the screen, but it’s genuinely fraught and tense in a way few strategy games manage. You really feel like the guy back at base, desperately trying to get his squad home safe, but working with limited tools—and with such basic visuals, your imagination fills in the blanks with all sorts of horror.

Over the course of a run, you’re able to upgrade your team’s stats, equipment, and even their behaviours—for example allowing a melee specialist who makes a beeline for any enemy he sees to also shoot at them as he charges. You can buy new orders too, opening up more fine control in missions. This might be the first game I’ve played where I got excited about gaining the ability to tell people to go to specific rooms when I want them to.

I do wish that the demo showed off a bit more depth. The game describes itself as an “auto-battler”, but it doesn’t quite have that sense of developing a killer build that you’d normally expect from that genre, and despite lots of tense moments, I found myself completing my first run without too much difficulty. I basically just picked whatever upgrades I fancied without much of a plan and it seemed to work out.

I’d hope there’s a bit more bite and more to dig into in the full release, due July 11. Currently greyed-out menu options such as alternate starting squads and meta-progression for your commander are promising, at least.

But what does already feel fully formed is Xenopurge’s brilliantly crafted atmosphere and aesthetic. Like 2016’s Duskers, it wields minimalism and retro tech expertly to freak you out far more than a horde of detailed 3D monsters ever would.

Don’t just take my word for it—thanks to the demo available on Steam, you can go get lost in the monitor glow yourself for free right now.