Purified alpha available for hacked Vitas

The weather is colder, winter is coming for the Vita. 

But the pixels are hot in Purified, a project first revealed in 2021 by solo dev BalderDragon. Now he's released an alpha version, available on the homebrew downloader of your choice (along with a host of other new titles for the FuHEN contest). 

Update: Purified won this year's FuHEN homebrew contest, netting Balder a cool $800 for his efforts and highlighting his skills as a coder. Scene stalwart, 2 Old 4 Gaming commented, "I was blown away by Purified. This third person shooter looks great, has a brilliantly dark atmosphere and plays really well." But, do try the others too, so much fun!

Note, I'm struggling to download it, perhaps there's too many excited Vita users hammering the poor little server. 

Update: Had some time to play Purified now. First tip, don't play - listen to the menu soundtrack - very powerful stuff! Once past that, Purified's tutorial is a smart introduction to the mechanics (left shoulder aim, right shoulder fire/run). 

Into the game and there's no time for standing around looking at the scenery, but at first glance, its a lot sharper than the early screens led me to believe. The second the timer counts down in the Library, imp-like Convert creatures will be running at/after the player. 

With the second wave, the Possessed Infantry are armed with sub-machine guns, but you can pick them up to broaden your fire power once you take them down. At this point the dodge button comes into play along with an impressive set of wings.

Gunplay is fast and furious and in the alpha it is die-fast, restart quickly to improve your awareness of the levels and enemies. I guess what look like health crates will come to life in a later version, or I'm pressing the wrong button! 

As an alpha, there are a few times Purified black screens and presumably crashes, but getting back in is quick enough. Players can set the FPS to 30,60 or Max, and there are a few other tweaks too.  

I'm still far from done, but Purified is officially feature complete, making this version the Alpha version! #purified #vitaisland #fuhen pic.twitter.com/3jQh8Nv91o

— Balder (@BalderDragon) September 21, 2023

With Quake and Doom overtones, the arena shooter has a thumping soundtrack from Brian Czernikowski. More when it downloads and I get some blasting under my belt.