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Man, there were a lot of RPGs at PAX this year. With Blizzard showing its trifecta in the far corner and the entire floor dotted by various forms of online roleplaying conduits, it’s weird how a little game by a small company can possible pierce the veil lying over the whole event. But it seems that's what has happened with Torchlight.
One cannot stop but think that Torchlight looks fairly similar to something else that we’ve seen a lot of lately. You travel underground fighting all sorts of fantasy creatures using spells and upgradable equipment, all of which is randomly generated by some background mechanic. Which is what you can expect, really, when the game comes to use from the designers of the first two Diablos and Fate. What this game adds, however, is a bit more charm.
The story behind Torchlight is pretty standard and/or ignorable. There’s a town called Torchlight, under which is an infinitely deep dungeon that you are asked to explore by the denizens of said town because some force is corrupting the valuable resources the infinitely deep dungeon provides. You play one of three adequately equipped classes, either the Destroyer (a fighter-type), the Vanquisher (an archer-type) or an Alchemist (a wizard-type). You also have a pet, which fights by your side and can also be transformed into other animals to change its attacks.
Where Torchlight tries to spring ahead, however, is graphics and accessibility. The game looks great in a cartoony kind of way, with a lot of strong lines and dramatic colors, a good look for a game that will probably have a good deal of repetition. The combat moves quickly, continually thrusting forward with a small set of skills that can devastate the field and look nice right off the bat, and having the extra assistance of a pet, including its ability to run back to town to sell off your junk drops if you don’t feel like leaving the underground, helps the delving a bit. It’s easy to just jump right in and start killing spiders, delving the Ember mines under the doomed little town.
While there is a story element, it doesn’t overwhelm the game, petering out around level 30 or so while the game itself offers support up to level 99, with an ever-deepening dungeon and more equipment and bosses to search for. With this much to explore, you’d expect quite a fee for this game, but it actually will be available to download for only $20. The team has said that Torchlight is their testing ground for an MMO, but for now, we get this little enjoyable but surprisingly deep single player version, which should be available for download October 27. If you like this type of game, be sure to check it out. See some screenshots below.
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