Vallum reimplements the versus mode of Rampart, the 1990 Atari arcade game. Two players share one battlefield and one clock: they shell each other’s walls, then race to seal a castle back up before the phase ends. Whoever fails to seal is out.
Rampart shipped with a single-player campaign — ships, landers, grunts, craters, an armada to hold off. None of that exists in a two-player siege, and none of it is here. The campaign is a different game that happens to share a board.
That is also why there is no computer opponent to play against. In the original, versus is played between people; the machine’s only role was in a mode we are not building. There is a short guided drill for learning the shape of a round alone, and the game itself is something you play with someone.
Where the original had a rule, we matched it — including the ones that look like bugs until you understand them, like never choosing which cannon fires, or a coastline sealing a wall for free.
Where it was genuinely silent, we decided on our own terms and said which is which. A handful of things knowingly depart from the original, each for a reason we can state. Nothing here is guessed at and then presented as heritage.
Some numbers are still being tuned — phase lengths, the piece supply, how much a cannon can take. Those will move once enough matches have been played to argue about them, and the rules page reads them from the game rather than restating them.
Vallum is free. There is nothing to install, no account to make, and no name to pick — a match is a link you send someone, and the two of you are the whole roster.
It runs no analytics, sets no advertising cookies and makes no third-party requests: the fonts are served from the same place as the game. Matchmaking and a ranked ladder are being built, and when they arrive an account will be optional and will exist to hold a rating and a match history — nothing else.