A run in Hull Rupture has one overriding objective, and the developers phrase it better than the genre norm: keep the ship moving. Everything else — the base building, the tower defence, the crew economy — exists to serve the propulsion that gets the vessel toward the alien homeworld. Stop producing, and you fall behind the assault schedule; stop defending, and the hull opens up; and if the aliens reduce Despot to 0 HP, the run ends immediately.
Aliens attack the hull in waves at known times and known positions — you are told when and where, but not exactly what. A new assault lands roughly every seven days, and each one recalculates your resources, your momentum and your estimated remaining mission length. That recomputation is the point of the roguelite structure: it means a good defensive layout in week one can be the wrong layout in week six.
The June 15, 2026 Steam Next Fest demo shipped with a tutorial level plus a repeatable standard mode, and the demo objective is survive 20 waves and beat the final boss. If you want to learn the systems without committing to the full run, the demo is the cleanest place to do it, and it is where most of the early community guides are written against.