I am into the concept of weird "MMO"s and I appreciate that you tried something new. I also like the Creeper games, which this is vaguely reminiscent of. But as it is, the game is way too simple to hold any interest.
I can't really care about leveling up either, since all you seem to get is abilities, and the abilities don't seem very relevant. Purge and Purifier seem to be all you need. The new Sear might be worth something. But I think you need to think about what exactly the role of the other ones is meant to be. Strike does 5 damage for 20 energy. You know what else does 5 damage for 20 energy? Using Purge 5 times.
The offline energy gain element doesn't seem very relevant when the cap is reached so quickly. At some point my cap went up from 100 to 110 though and I don't know why.
Also I don't get why the last hitter on a heart gets all the credit.
I am not sure that just adding more complexity will actually make it good, but at least it is easy to think of ways to do it. Here is some brainstorming:
- Have terrain that influences how quickly the corruption spreads, with perhaps some barriers that block it entirely, and some where it spreads like wildfire.
- Maybe make some rules about where we can use Purge, so we can't cheaply punch a hole to put a purifier in. Say, only allow it to be used on tiles adjacent to uncorrupted tiles, so we have to make a path. Maybe a different, more expensive ability can bypass this requirement.
- Maybe have similar restrictions on attacking hearts, so we can't just knock them all out first thing at the start of a round.
- Have corruption sometimes make some pre-announced move that we care about somehow. Things like spawning a new heart, or having a surge of growth in one cardinal direction.
- Give people oddly-shaped purifiers that are more economic in terms of energy/area. Perhaps give everyone a different shape (changing daily? or chosen?) so they are encouraged to coordinate them between players.