Xenopurge, review

Xenopurge is a tactical auto-battler developed by the Greek studio Traptics and published by Firesquid. The game has been available on Steam since 20 November 2025. In the game, players take on the role of commanders of an elite team, tasked with countering the Xenos threat and protecting humanity.

We will carry out our command role from a remote location relative to that of the combatants. As in a war room, our job is simply to give orders, which the soldiers will carry out.

Xenopurge: The Tough Life of a Commander

In Xenopurge, our task will not be to tell soldiers exactly where to position themselves on the battlefield, as in any RTS game such as Desperados or Shadow Tactics. Instead, we will give them directives such as ‘explore’, ‘focus on a target’, ‘collect an item’ or ‘escape’.

Depending on the characteristics of our characters, these orders will be carried out differently. Some soldiers, for example, tend to charge the alien and engage in direct melee combat, while others prefer to stay stationary and have a clear line of fire with which to use their firearms. Some simply run away at the sight of the alien. Depending on the composition of the team, we may have to assign a different combination of orders.

As a good commander, we must be able to assess our team and make the right choices. However, Xenopurge does not make life easy for us; in fact, the game seems to take pleasure in causing us to lose. Like any procedurally generated roguelite game, we have the usual branching map that allows us to purchase team and weapon upgrades and acquire new crew members. Unfortunately the money earned in missions, even by completing extra objectives, is never enough to reach the end of the mission with a competitive team.

Progress towards permanent improvements is slow, so every time we start the game, it feels like we’re starting from scratch. Luckily, at least the missions are always different, so repeating the run is less boring.

Smoothing the Edges

Xenopurge is a game with a very evocative atmosphere. Without the synopsis on the Steam page, it would be easy to associate the title with the Alien franchise. The sound effects are very atmospheric and immersive; at times, it feels as though we are actually commanding a mission to eliminate hostile aliens.

However, we would have preferred a few more details. For example, the icons for enemy aliens are barely different from one another. During the most intense phases, when there are many aliens, it would be helpful to know what type of alien we are facing, so that we can decide whether to fight or flee. Instead, we only realise this when it is too late.

Whenever possible, we always try to test the titles we review on various devices. In this case, the game seemed to work on a less powerful device, so we tested it on our least powerful machine, which has the following specifications:

• CPU: i5-1135G7
• Iris Xe GPU
• 8 GB x 2, 3200 MHz RAM
• NVMe SSD
• OS: Arch Linux

Thanks to Gamescope, we achieved an average frame rate of 30 fps, enabling us to upscale from 1280×720 to 1920×1080. Therefore, the game can also run on some PCs that fall below the minimum requirements, albeit with limitations.