Torchlight vs Vaporum: Lockdown
Torchlight
Torchlight is a fun dungeon crawling game that features an epic storyline, thrilling action and a loyal pet companion, which you can customize, to boot! Assemble a team of three heroes and descend into the monsters-filled caverns below the town in search of the valuable and rare ore, Ember, as well as plenty of riches and glory. You can even take a breather in between all the monster slaying to head off to a fishing pool and go fishing. The fishes you get are surprisingly powerful though - they can be fed to your loyal companion and turn it into powerful battle allies rather than just being a pack mule.Like most dungeon crawlers, randomization is key to the gameplay, giving players a fresh new experience everytime they replay the game, but of course, mod support also gives the game an even longer lifespan. To faciliate this replayability, the game even has a retirement system in place which allow you to pass down prized equipment to your new heroes as you "retire" the old one.
Torchlight may not have enjoyed a following that's large as Diablo, but the game has its own group of loyal fans and hardcore players who still play the game. The game itself feels so much more lighthearted than the dark demonic tones of the latter and is perfect for players who enjoy dungeon crawlers but dislike being scared silly by grotesque creatures of hell.
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.