Melting World Online vs Vaporum: Lockdown
Melting World Online
Melting World Online is a strategy RPG set in what seems to be an alien world. Featuring a unique old school-look, this game more than makes up for its dated graphics with an in-depth and surprisingly strategic gameplay. Aside from the timed turn-based combat, which is modelled after Fallout games' VATS system and is designed to keep you on your toes, you'll also get to assemble your own team of mechs (along with their mech pilots) to bring into the battlefield.The most intriguing part of the gameplay, however, is how you can customize your mech. Instead of giving you fixed slots to put your weapons and armor in, you get a grided box for each part of your mech, namely the cockpit, left and right arms, the body and left and right legs, where you can attempt to squeeze in as many weapons and armor as you can. After all, the more weapons you have means the more attacking options you'll have, while having more armor means your mech can take a lot more punishment from the enemy before going down.
Melting World Online may not win any prizes when it comes to its nostalgic 90s visuals, but its gameplay is definitely worth a look, especially if you're a huge fan of strategy games.
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.