Purgator.io

Purgator.io

I hit escape and clicked “save and exit” on the fourth game in a row. I heaved a sigh and scratched my chin. Nothing was doing it for me today, and I was bored and tired. I looked at the clock… Only another two hours before I had to get to bed if I wanted to have energy for another shlog of a day at work. I got up and fetched a snack, and as I munched I brainstormed what other games I could try. I thought to myself, “You know what we haven’t done in a while? Something that’s always there to easily try out a whole slew of low brain economy distractions? Browser games.”

I went back to my computer and hit up a few of my old haunts from when I was pretending to do classwork in high school, but… I didn’t have any luck. Most of them had ceased to exist and a few that were still around had the exact same games as when I had last visited them years ago. Still frustrated and now a little sad from thinking about the continuous state of obsolescence that we all find ourselves in, I just googled “browser games” and had more success this way.

There were a few big ones that came up first, games that I had heard about but never had any interest in trying, so I scrolled on. I was looking for something a little less mainstream, I suppose. Those are usually more interesting. I stumbled upon a site that had a list of well-reviewed browser games organized by category. Some of these did pique my interest, but, ever in search of something that really caught my eye, I kept scrolling and came to one particular section.

Did you know that there are like hundreds of those “.io” games? You know the ones that are usually kind of like Snake meets Tron? Oof, showing my age here a bit. Like you worm around and gobble up little things to get bigger, and there are other players around that can cut you off mid-squirm and kill you, then eat up all your goodies? Yeah, those. I’ve played a couple variations before, they’ll distract a person for a bit. Buuuut I wasn’t actually feeling that kind of game, either. I was just thrown off by the sheer volume of clones.

And here is where I actually spotted something interesting. It took a few hard yanks of the mouse wheel to get to the end of this section, and something made me stop. It was just another clone of the game, but for some reason it did grab my attention. Purgator.io. Curious, was it going to be like… A spooky version? I would try that. I clicked and loaded in.

Not sure what I was expecting, about five seconds was enough to determine that it was just another dumb clone. I found myself controlling a little snake with a big head, complete with googly eyes and pupils that rolled around as you turned. I almost closed out right then and there, but a little tutorial window appeared when I picked up a spark of light, identifying it as a  “soul shard”. Okay… I doubted it was going anywhere interesting, but I decided to at least play until I died. It wouldn’t take long.

I swam around, picking up a bunch of the little dots, and started seeing the much larger snakes of other players and some AI-controlled ones that were wandering aimlessly. Those I easily took out, and they shot me up to a size on par with some of the players, so I started seeking out my first victim… And just as I was curving around the front of a snake slightly larger than my own, a big one died off screen, its tail spheres separating into floating, colorful balls, and one of them flew right to me and was absorbed into my snake. I exploded up several sizes and the player that I was circling was suddenly unable to avoid my tail, and crashed, also shooting out colorful balls in every direction. I swept down and gobbled the remains up with a fleeting feeling of satisfaction. But then…

I looked up and my surroundings were gone. My mouth fell open and my eyes darted around. Where was my computer? My desk? My chair? No wait, I was standing now. The room that I was in was very dark. I looked up to see an opening between two stone walls, only slightly illuminated by a flickering torch on the wall outside the doorway. I spun around, looking in every direction and trying to get my bearings.

Okay. There were four doorways like the one in front of me, each with a torch on the wall outside. The lighted parts of the walls gave way to shadows between the doors. Okay. I was in a square room with four exits. My confusion shifted in the direction of fear and panic. Where the fuck was I? How… What? My questions kept me spiraling for a moment before I heard sprinting footsteps. My head shot up so fast that I felt a twinge in my neck. My eyes must have been bulging as they tried to take in every morsel of visual information possible. Just a glimpse of a shadow, moving away from one of the doors.

My senses started to catch up and I felt a weight in my hand. I looked down and held up what I was holding in the meager light. It was… An axe. Yeah, like a lumberjack’s axe. As I held it up, the light caught the blade, revealing the dirty, pockmarked metal, rust where the hilt met the head, and… Rust. I’m gonna go ahead and say that was just more rust along the edge.

The pitter-pattering of footsteps prickled my ears again, sending a chill down my spine. They weren’t right… They were too fast to be human. They came from behind me, so I turned and looked that way, but again, just the movement of a shadow as something was running around this hallway outside of my chamber. I tiptoed my way to that door and listened for a moment, but heard nothing. As I cautiously peeked around the corner, I flinched as something moved very near my face and a sharp pain made me cry out and bring my hands up, one brandishing the axe and the other pressing against the source of pain. 

I recovered as quickly as I could, but it was only enough to catch a smallish figure sprinting away into the shadows, disturbingly fast. I looked at the blood in my palm and prodded at where it hurt. Just an inch below my left eye. That thing was trying to blind me! It probably had a small knife or a shiv… I grimaced and blinked away the pain, peering down the corridor. They were gone.

I hefted my axe and stepped out into the hall, focusing my hearing, trying to pick up any little sound. I tried to walk quietly down the hallway, but I seemed to be wearing some heavy boots, and didn’t want to lower my guard to take them off. By stepping on my heel and letting the rest of the boot kind of roll forward, I was able to minimize the sound pretty effectively, but it still produced a slight shuffle. As sneakily as I could, I crept up to the corner ahead of me. I stood there silently, scarcely breathing, just listening for what seemed like forever. 

At last, the slightest rasp of cloth tickled the silence and I leapt around the corner, coming face-to-face with my attacker. What I saw was unnerving. It was some kind of small humanoid creature, hideous and filthy. Its eyes were wild and the thick layer of dirt on its face indicated that it had been here a long time. Its hair was matted to its face and stuck out in every direction. It was wearing a rag covered in small spots of blood and all manner of other fluids. In one blood and dirt encrusted hand it was clutching that small dagger. 

I hesitated to attack and was rewarded with a swift knife in the belly, and the creature was sprinting off before I even felt the pain. I stumbled back a step and touched the wound with my hand, which came away bloody. Oh, shit. 

I gritted my teeth and looked up to catch the creature turning the far corner. Ok, I thought. If I’ve got this right, there’s a big square room in the center and a hallway that goes all the way around it. There’s a door in the middle of each side of the square and the four corners connect the hallway, so… There’s three ways it could go. Double back to this corner, go all the way around the hallway, or cut through the center room and come out the middle door. So far it’s been sticking to the hallway, but if it’s thinking on its feet and trying to survive… I think it’s most likely to cut through the middle room now that I’m out in the hallway.

I resolved to take a gamble on the middle door just behind me. I stalked back to the door and waited in ambush. As silent as I could be, I waited for a sound… And there it was. Just the slightest rustling of ragged cloth.

I pounced, swinging my axe horizontally at what I judged to be chest-height for the creature as I stepped around the corner. Thunk. My clumsy swing was effective and connected, though the momentum of the heavy axe carried me forward and toppled both of us over. I got up on my knees and looked down at what I’d done. 

It was… a girl. A filthy, messy creature with wild eyes, but… A girl. She couldn’t have been older than ten. My axe was embedded into her sternum and she was writhing, blood starting to leak from the corners of her mouth.

 The utter terror in her eyes humanized her, and I just froze, staring down at the fatally injured creature. And then… I was no longer in that filthy, dank dungeon. I was kneeling on top of a perfectly normal human girl, lying on a couch. The rosy color was draining from her cheeks and sweat was beading on her brow as she twitched. Her mouth was moving soundlessly and her small hands clenched the fabric of the couch. A tablet lay discarded on the floor next to her, and on it… The screen was fading quickly, but I could still make out the bubbly letters spelling out “Purgator.io.”

Then I was back in my room, sitting in front of my monitor. The window had closed itself and I was staring at my desktop. I must have sat there for half an hour at least, processing what had happened. When I eventually got myself moving again, I was deep in my own head. I went for a walk, stepped into a convenience store and stared at the drink cooler for ten minutes, walked out without buying anything or saying so much as a word to the employee, went home and went to bed.

Since then, I’ve just been living my life. Out here among everybody, a murderer. There was a hollowness inside of me, and nothing seemed to fill it. I just didn’t want to talk to anybody, didn’t want to put any effort into anything. I stuck to my routine because I didn’t know what else to do. That is, until today.

The idea occurred to me at work, and then I’d been able to focus on nothing else. I finished out the day and hurried home, booted up my computer, went to the browser, and my fingers greedily plucked away at the keys, typing in “Purgator.io.” It came up without a hassle, and I felt a smile creep onto my face. Finally, I thought. Make me feel alive.