Play This: ‘Purge’ – A Mirror’s Edge Wannabe

One of the most unique games to have come out in recent years is Mirror’s Edge – a DICE developed first person freeruning platformer. It may come as a surprise that there haven’t really been any clones of the game, that is, until now. A group of students at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona have created a short free playable demo for their game Purge which was made for their Master’s in Creation of Videogames. While at first sight Purge seems to adapt the visuals of both Borderlands and XIII, rest assured, the gameplay is pure Mirror’s Edge.

Not completely unlike Faith’s motives, Jack’s only goal in Purge is to navigate the environment in order to reach a huge tower so he can escape the pursuing guards on a zeppelin. As you step into his freerunning shoes, you’ll fall immediately in love with the visual design – a kind of steampunk comic-look that has already defined some of the most unique and memorable games in recent years. From the very start of the 15 minute demo, a few problems are noticeable, but let’s not forget this is merely a student demo and due to that Purge is already an impressive effort. The tutorial introduces the basic movements and the slightly unintuitive controls. While they are adequate, they quite obviously lack the polish of Mirror’s Edge, but do not let that put you off.

One of the defining aspects of Mirror’s Edge’s visuals was that they also doubled up as the game’s interface – informing the player of the directions they could take across the rooftops and scaffolding with brash primary colours against a white base colour. Purge similarly uses the color green to guide the player as well as flashing objects and footsteps to indicate that a freerunning action is available. It’s not quite as stylish but it works just as well to allow the player some form of direction as they run at high speeds.

The range of actions available to the player is quite admirable also; sliding, rolling, pole swinging, pipe climbing, crouching, wallrunning and quite obviously jumping. It’s everything that the basics of Mirror’s Edge ever provided without the additional combat. All of it is animated pretty well and is actually quite easy to pull off in-game as well, it’s all rather impressive for a team of no more than five students.

After a good deal of running and bouncing around, you then share the floor with a few armed guards who stand between you and the tower. There are a few cool elements introduced here for the first and only time luckily as they need a bit of work. First up is distracting a guard with a thrown stone. Once you have worked out how to pick up the stone, you then have to deal with the awful AI – seriously, I threw about 20 stones (which bounce like paper balls and make no noise) before the damn guard ran to it at one point. There are other things that can be nitpicked at here but I prefer to let you discover them for yourself, because I am sadistic like that.

The next little feature is a very cool idea that does work, but something about its implementation seems underwhelming. You drop down to see a grey floor plate in front of you which represents the area in which you can pull out a mirror shard to see the position of the patrolling guard around the corner. That’s it really, once you see his back is turned you run around to the next bit of cover and leave what is essentially the tutorial area.

From thereon you do an almighty leap to a lower rooftop (remember to roll) and then the game takes a bit more of a freeflowing form. A bit of music finally gets introduced and the player travels along a rough path with a few cool surprises along the way as they dodge gunfire and then the demo ends. I think there are a few multiple paths to the end in this last part of the game but cannot say for sure. To be honest, it’s hard to really say anything about the game, it just feels like a bit more Mirror’s Edge but with a lot less polish. Of course, to compare the game to one of the most unique and wonderful games in recent years in such a throwaway manner like that means it has probably been pretty successful in its execution.

I would certainly be very interested to see what these students do with this demo if they decide to put more work into it, or transfer its concept into a more ambitious project. For now, this is a free demo that is definitely worth checking out for the visual style alone and should be applauded for its ideas and execution. It seems very harsh to compare Purge to Mirror’s Edge as if that was an easy thing to achieve, so in actuality these five students have done an outstanding job, a big congratulations to them.

Purge can be download for free on your PC by clicking on this fabulous link.

For more information on Purge and to keep up with the developers, head over to the game’s official Facebook page.