Hyper Light Drifter vs Vaporum: Lockdown
Hyper Light Drifter
Hyper Light Drifter is an action-adventure RPG with a very unique pixel-based art style and a fun gameplay that will keep you coming back for more. The storyline in this game is pretty bleak since you play as a drifter who happens to have an odd but vicious disease that keeps haunting your thoughts and dodging your every move. By traveling to the dark and savage lands of Buried Time, you hope to find a way to finally be free of this illness.Being ill, you aren't exactly in your fighting prime and so, instead of relying on your frailing strength, combat in this game mainly involves dashing away to avoid blows and trying to strike the enemy in between dashes. In some way, it may feel like being the less burly underdog in a WWE match. There are plenty of weapons to help you though, along with a variety of incredible skills which you can master.
The world you play in is also quite vast, with plenty of hidden nooks and crannies - usually with a bonus reward in them - for you to find. In addition to the story mode, there is a horde mode (endless) as well where you can truly put your combat skills to the test. However, one of the best things about this game is the soundtrack which somehow seems to complement the game's graphics and its overall atmosphere perfectly.
With the unique pixel art and the old-school feel, Hyper Light Drifter may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you do enjoy such games, you'll find that this game is truly a hidden indie gem.
Vaporum: Lockdown
Vaporum: Lockdown is a first-person, dungeon crawler featuring old-school grid-based dungeon-crawling gameplay with real-time combat, fun Sokoban-like puzzles, cool steampunk-themed setting, and an intriguing mystery to uncover. In this game, you play as a scientist, Ellie, who’s trapped within a locked-down facility called the Arx Vaporum filled with murderous robots and mutated creatures. Will Ellie be able to escape the place in one piece? What will she discover as she makes her way through Arx Vaporum?In terms of gameplay, you’ll be moving Ellie, the protagonist of the story, one grid at a time. Turning to face a certain direction before you can say turn a corner also requires an extra tap of the keyboard. However, this also means that you can actually move like a crab in this game if you’re sure of the path you’re on. Like most dungeon crawlers, Vaporum: Lockdown comes with devious traps, enemies and puzzles. Traps in this game can be rather easily avoided as long as you got the timing down right.
The interesting part about this game is that combat plays out in real-time here, unlike any other old-school dungeon crawlers we have experienced before. This means that it is entirely possible to loop a sequence of “move and attack” when facing something stationary so you can avoid getting hit at all. However, this also means that more mobile enemies can be trickier to slay – it all boils down to timing really.
There are also fun Sokoban-like puzzles in this game. Most of them involve having you to move crates around to fill holes in the ground, block danger from the path you want to take, or even to serve as paperweights on metal pressure plates. For hardcore treasure seekers, the game even has several hidden compartments that an inquisitive explorer might be able to find, each of these alcoves usually come with some nice rewards. There is a sufficient variety of loot, and you can get better gear as you progress.
Being a prequel of the highly-successful Vaporum, Vaporum: Lockdown definitely does the original game, and the Vaporum universe as a while, proud. Besides the few new features here and there, the gameplay is generally similar to the original title and hence, would be instantly familiar to fans of Vaporum. The storytelling here is great as well, offering so much more lore than before, and of course, the fantastic atmosphere here will pull you right into the fumium-obsessed world that Ellie Teller lives in.