A browser siege for two, and nothing else.

Versus, and only versus

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.

Faithful where it counts

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.

What it costs, and what it keeps

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, or the next person looking for one, 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. A rating 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.

What it keeps is small, and nothing names you until you look for a stranger or send a note. Doing either gives your browser a random id — no name, no email — and from then on each finished match, friend matches included, is written down against it: which seat, what you scored and placed, how much you built, when it began and ended, and the link it was played on. That is what a rating and a history will be built from. A note you choose to send — from a match or its end screen, the drill, the waiting page or the front page — is kept with the match it points at, when it points at one, along with which browser and window it came from, until a person has read it, and it reaches nothing public unless that person puts it there. Only your browser can present that id; clear this site’s data and you are nobody again, and what was recorded stays, under an id that then belongs to no one. Cloudflare, which hosts the game, sees and logs your connection the way any host does. Nothing is sold and nothing is shared.