Changelog

PULSE//ZERO v0.5.0 — EVOLUTION is out. DISTORTION made the systems talk to each other; EVOLUTION makes them roll differently every time you press play. It extends the Run Director rather than replacing it — everything below is a new decision the Director makes, or a new thing it can decide between.

What’s new

• Combat Profiles. Each run gets a personality: Pursuit, Fortress, Corruption, Extermination, Swarm or Elite Hunt — each with its own enemy mix and rhythm. You feel it in the first thirty seconds.
• Sectors. Runs unfold somewhere that bends the rules: Overclock speeds everything up, Blackout dims your sight, Titan Graveyard courts bosses, Signal Storm churns the grid, Fractured destabilises the field with drifting gusts, and Endless Pulse floods you with charge.
• Corruption Events. A stable signal can destabilise mid-run and shift the Combat Profile out from under you — once per run, and always telegraphed.
• Eleven new enemies. Artillery, assassins, shield projectors, repair drones, gravity anchors, mine layers, signal jammers, turret constructors, corruptors, phantoms and juggernauts — plus the turrets constructors build. Each is a decision rather than another body: a projector makes its neighbours hard to kill, an anchor rewrites where you can safely stand, a jammer scrambles your score readout.
• Elite variants. Enemies can spawn Veteran, Corrupted, Volatile or Phase-Shifted — tougher, stranger, worth more.
• Two new bosses. SIGNAL WARDEN locks the arena down with firewalls and deploys defensive support — break its shield nodes, then the core. HIVE QUEEN never holds still: she circles, spawns, and drowns the field in her brood.
• Role-based encounters — fortress lines, artillery batteries, control grids, builder sieges, corruption cells and heavy vanguards.
• Black holes evolve. They fuse into a supermassive well, can be destroyed, and erupt Void Spawn when they detonate.
• New aiming options for mouse play — an optional aim cursor, and a relative (trackpad) aiming mode with its own sensitivity, so a trackpad no longer runs out of surface mid-fight.
• EVOLUTION leaderboard. Runs record the Combat Profile and Sector they were played under, and you can filter the board by them — so “best Corruption run” is a question you can actually ask. EVOLUTION scores rank on their own board; the DISTORTION board stays viewable.

Changed / fixed

• A performance pass on the new roster removed a frame-time cliff at heavy saturation, and every enemy that spawns subordinates now has a hard ceiling on them.
• Menus got a polish pass: one consistent toggle, panel chrome across every overlay, and contrast fixes where text sat too close to the background.
• Three objectives asked for the old ×16 combo cap; they now ask for ×32, which is what the game has actually had since DISTORTION.
• The music no longer stops if you retry straight from the game-over screen, and the gameplay bed is audible in every Sector.

Downloads

• Windows — unzip and run PULSE_ZERO.exe.
• macOS — unzip, right-click PULSE//ZERO.app → Open.
• Linux / Steam Deck — unzip and run ./pulse_zero.x86_64.

No telemetry — nothing leaves your machine unless you opt into online features.

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal

PULSE//ZERO v0.4.0 — DISTORTION is out. It’s a systems update: rather than piling more onto the screen, it makes the combat pieces interact, so a run reads as one escalating story instead of separate mechanics.

What’s new

• Overdrive is an earned burst. Charge your Pulse through skilful play, ignite MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, then spend it down — keep killing to sustain it.
• Combos climb to x32. Twice the old ceiling, so a hot streak has somewhere to go.
• Bosses with personality. They read the fight, shift mood, and reshape the arena against you.
• Run Director v2. Encounters are composed from enemy roles and paced to how you’re actually playing — pushed harder on strong runs, eased in rough patches, with hard fairness guards so it’s never a cheap shot.
• Grid Anomalies bend reality mid-run — gravity wells, ion storms, and a BLACKOUT that drops you into a spotlight so you can always find your ship.
• The battlefield remembers. Your fights scar the Living Grid and it heals over time; Maximum Overdrive overwhelms the healing.
• The environment reads the run — background structures wake and signal traffic rises as pressure escalates, then settle in recovery.
• Unlockable HUD themes and display-mode shaders.

Changed / fixed

• Combo multiplier now decays step-by-step instead of cliffing to x1 on a lull or hit.
• Bombs clear the field as a defensive move — they no longer award score (no farming).
• Colourblind mode now enhances separation (daltonization) instead of simulating loss.
• Boss name and health bar sit on a scrim so they read over the bright field.
• Bloom is confined to the play area — peak moments no longer white out the screen.
• The arena theme returns between fights instead of staying escalated.

Downloads

• Windows — unzip and run PULSE_ZERO.exe.
• macOS — unzip, right-click PULSE//ZERO.app → Open.
• Linux / Steam Deck — unzip and run ./pulse_zero.x86_64.

No telemetry — nothing leaves your machine unless you opt into online features.

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal

A follow-up to v0.3.0 that finishes the online loop: linked players now see the global board inside the game, plus a native macOS build and QR pairing.

Online — you can finally see it

• Global leaderboard in-game. The leaderboard screen has GLOBAL / YOUR RUNS tabs. GLOBAL shows the live Northforge board, highlights your entry, and shows your personal best rank even when you’re outside the visible top-N.
• Post-run rank. The game-over screen now confirms your submission — “GLOBAL RANK #N” (or “saved locally” if you’re offline).
• QR pairing. Scan a QR to open the link page instead of typing the URL; the pairing code is baked into the QR.
• Clearer pairing status — the game tells you whether it’s waiting for you to enter the code or having trouble reaching the server, instead of a silent wait.

New platform

• Native macOS build — universal (Apple Silicon + Intel). Ad-hoc signed; on first launch, right-click the app → Open.

Fixes

• The online client now defaults to the live server. The leaderboard read path was previously never wired up, so linked players saw no board or rank. Fixed.

Downloads

• Windows — unzip and run PULSE_ZERO.exe.
• macOS — unzip, right-click PULSE//ZERO.app → Open.
• Linux / Steam Deck — unzip and run ./pulse_zero.x86_64.

No telemetry — nothing leaves your machine unless you opt into online features.

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal

PULSE//ZERO v0.3.0 is here. This build is about making the game calmer to read, fairer to fight, and more rewarding to return to — without compromising its offline-first design.

Added

• The Void Titan — the largest encounter yet: a hostile anomaly that has taken control of the arena, not just another ship. The fight runs three phases — Stabilization, Escalation, Collapse — across six telegraphed attacks: Gravity Well, Null Beam, Asteroid Shear, Event-Horizon Ring, Singularity Spawn and Void Lance. Destroy the surrounding nodes to open attack windows; read the arena and learn the Titan’s rhythm rather than trading blows with a health bar.
• Local and global leaderboards. An offline leaderboard stores your most recent 100 runs locally and works with no internet connection. Online submission via Northforge Online is entirely optional. Offline first, online optional.
• Accessibility & visual controls. Disable screen shake or tune its intensity, a Reduced Effects mode, a high-visibility locator ring for tracking your ship, and clearer telegraphs for dangerous spawns and boss attacks.
• Richer run history. Completed runs record score, survival time, kills, bosses defeated, anomalies encountered, ship, mode and version.

Changed

• The Living Grid is easier to read — cleaner void space beneath the ship, a motion wake that reinforces movement at speed, calmer projectile impact ripples, and clearer gravity-well draining effects, all without draining the energy.
• Fairer spawning. Enemies use safer placement rules that avoid spawning directly on top of you, and more dangerous types are telegraphed before they arrive. Deaths should feel earned.
• Consistent player damage. Every damage path — enemy contact, boss attacks, hazards and explosive elite deaths — now respects the same shields, invulnerability frames, death and respawn rules.

Privacy

• No telemetry. PULSE//ZERO does not collect background gameplay analytics. Offline data stays local; only the information required for features you opt into is ever sent online.

Known issues

• Nothing called out for this build. Hit something? Tell us and we’ll chase it.

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal

A small follow-up to the Neon Update.

Changed

• Bumped version to 0.2.1.
• Bloom readability fix — crisp menus, glowier grid.

Added

• Run Director — a central pacing authority that coordinates how a run escalates.

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal

The arena has never looked this alive. This update is a big visual overhaul plus a wave of new content, readability work and fixes.

Neon glow overhaul

• Brand-new screen-space bloom — bright neon now radiates a soft glow, with white-hot cores bleeding coloured halos. That classic arena-shooter look.
• Runs on any GPU — no HDR required, so the glow shows up everywhere.
• Tuned for readability: enemies, bullets and the grid stay crisp and distinct; the glow is an accent, not a haze.
• The HUD stays razor-sharp above the effect.

New unlockable: Windows 95 theme

• A full retro reskin, unlocked at 15 boss kills:
  • Windows 95 Desktop — the iconic teal desktop and a flat silver grid.
  • Windows 95 HUD — score and combo as beveled grey “windows” with navy title bars, plus a taskbar with a Start button, life icons and a clock.

Bigger, meaner battlefield

• 8 hand-built mini-bosses now rotate in — Elite Hunter, Warden, Reaver, Weaver, Summoner, Bulwark, Lancer and the ground-pounding Juggernaut. Every attack is telegraphed; learn the tell.
• Enemy intensity up — denser, more relentless waves.
• Black holes now build up as they form (no more popping in) and their event-horizon core is lethal — don’t get swallowed.

Readability & accessibility

• The player ship now renders above everything and sits in an adaptive dark “focus pool” so it never gets lost in a crowded field.
• New High-Visibility Ship option (Settings → Accessibility) — an always-on locator ring + aim chevron that auto-picks a colour that contrasts the grid.
• Calmer, thinner arena grid that frames the fight instead of competing with it.

Fixed

• Lives display can no longer over-draw past the cap.
• Boss health bar no longer covers the run timer.
• Removed a redundant hazard and various pacing tweaks.

Photosensitivity note

This update adds more flashing/high-contrast neon. A Reduced Effects option in Settings tones it down (and disables the bloom).

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Feedback: hello@northforge-interactive.com · Devlog: northforge-interactive.com/journal