After a lot of moving around with the demise of Flagship Studios and the loss of the semi-developed game "Mythos", Runic Games is hard at work on a new project that will likely catch the attention of Diablo fans everywhere. The latest title in the works is a action RPG called Torchlight and while there are no plans to make this a carbon copy of Diablo, fans are told that developers hope there will be some similarities. Gamasutra recently interviewed with Runic Games' Max Schaefer to find out more about this new project.

As Korean firm Hanbitsoft has claimed the rights to Mythos, the team branched off to create Runic Games, where through a new deal with major Chinese online game publisher Perfect World, they get a second chance with the concept of a Diablo-like MMO with Torchlight.

"Torchlight is an action RPG, kind of in a similar vein that we were working on previously with the Mythos project," Schaefer tells Gamasutra. "It's evocative of that same style of gameplay; there are a lot of Diablo vets on the team."

While Schaefer clarifies that the art style and mood of Torchlight are completely different from Diablo, he hopes there will be commonalities elsewhere: "We always want you thinking that you've just got to go to one more room and do one more dungeon to find the coolest item -- and hopefully look up and it's three o'clock in the morning," he says.

The support of Perfect World "has been an absolute delight," says Schaefer, pegging the seasoned MMO operator as "exceptionally good and professional" at running online games.

To read more of this interview please visit Gamasutra!