I’ve always wondered why it’s called a
“dungeon crawl” when more often than not you spend
your time walking, running or fighting your way through multi-leveled
dungeons in search of either treasure or trouble rather than slowly
inching your way forward on your hands and knees. It seems like
crawling through a dungeon would get boring fairly quickly, and
don’t even get me started on how many pair of pantaloons
you’d no doubt go through – the repair bills alone
would
be so astronomical that all that treasure you went off adventuring to
discover would disappear into the hands of the local smiths and tailors
before you even get the chance to brush all the
cobwebs and dust out of your hair.
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2036"
target="_blank">
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight
from Runic Games kicks the pace of dungeon crawls into
overdrive thanks to a simple interface and visually appealing approach
to combat and environments. From what I was able to experience of the
game on
the PAX show floor this weekend,
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight
has plenty of potential to be an incredibly absorbing game once
it’s released this October. Between the randomly generated
maps, compelling class progression and the richly featured level editor
that comes bundled with the game there’s plenty of cool
things to look forward to hacking and slashing your way through.
While Torchlight
will initially include roughly 30 level’s worth of content,
players will be able to advance all the way up to level 100. One of the
ways this can be achieved is by delving into the depths of
what is essentially a bottomless dungeon located at the center of town.
And thanks to some cleverly located traveling merchants and the ability
to use travel scrolls to head back to town quickly, you need not worry
about lost progression should you find your inventory is getting full.
You'll also be able to send your trusty canine companion back to town
to sell your loot at any given point which makes these beasts much more
than a simple sidekick.
All told Torchlight
offers a quick, fun gaming experience so long as you enjoy the style of
isometric,
click-to-move content the game offers. But what’s truly
remarkable is
what a relatively small development team has managed to produce in only
11 months. Once
Torchlight
ships, Runic will be diving back into the development
dungeons, this time to begin working on their MMOG which will be set in
more of the
overland areas
of the
single-player game's
setting.
In the meantime, do yourself a favor and give
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight
a look – we’ve even made it easy for you to do
exactly that by adding in a massive batch of
screenshots and
concept art to our galleries for your viewing enjoyment!
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- Be sure to check out both
the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/tid/2261"
target="_blank">screenshot
and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/tid/2260"
target="_blank">concept art
galleries for
Torchlight! - You can find all of Ten Ton
Hammer’s PAX 2009 content inside
of a magical treasure chest
by clicking href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/pax09" target="_blank">right
here!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Torchlight Game Page.
