Torchlight

[caption id="attachment_1110" align="aligncenter" width="510" caption="Torchlight: Skeletons arising and being slain by a warrior"][/caption]
This is the twenty-eighth post in our Game of the Day series.

When people talk about the stagnation of games, they probably haven't played a whole lot of them in variety. That may be due to a lack there of, effort to find them, or simply that the largest marketing machines work to foist comfortable, generic repeats of mechanics rendered better. PAX, today, made this very apparent with multitudes of what can only be called WoW knock offs, more FPS, and more driving games with the same so-called realistic handling that causes you to spin out at 50mph in an expensive sports car. Then there's the really odd, vying for your intrigue lest it be exhausted elsewhere, and finally a couple of just plain fun games. Torchlight, thus far, has been such a gem.

Disclaimer: I have peculiar tastes in gaming, your mileage may very, and I don't doubt the hard work developers put into titles I have inadvertently lumped into the aforementioned categories.

At first glance I saw a cartoonish Diablo knock-off, and you'd probably be right. I haven't played Diablo enough, but there's a sadistically addictive simplicity to it. I didn't pay attention to the story blaring on the monitor, and only barely to one of its team members, because the point-click action drew me in. It wasn't until someone specifically asked me if they could "cut in" that I relinquished control.

There may be very fancy features under the hood, but what I gathered is that it's a solid set of mechanics. A short main plot seems to serve as a sample to the engine's strengths. One of the lead developers told me that past that 10-15 hour sojourn you can plunge into limitless and randomly generated depths to further expound upon the enjoyment. Supposedly a fully-featured editor provides the opportunity to create custom levels, possibly campaigns, and ultimately suck away more hours of your life (that's a compliment to it, by the way).

It's a 3D world, but the view is fixed at an isometric-style angle. When walls and other barriers obscure creatures, they turn into wireframe skeletons so you can "see without seeing". Movement is point and click or point and hold, then clicking on a creature with one of your buttons will unleash your weaponry. Alternate hot keys exist for further enhancement including abilities, items, etc. There's some leveling and you have a talent tree that will be familiar to WoW players. Apparently there's more classes than just the one I played. And then you can, my favorite, hold shift and then click to stay in one spot (e.g. don't seek towards your target). Targeting is missing which means you have to keep clicking and tapping to do stuff, but also means multiple creatures may be effected by your attacks.

My favorite aspect is AI-controlled companions. I had, for some reason, a dude with a big sword following me and then lots of little pet creatures. You can summon imps out of corpses using a spell, maybe part of my class, and talents can increase the number of these you can have at any one time. They tend to go where you shoot or come to your aid if you're under attack. I liked that I didn't have to worry about them so much.

Did I mention this whole thing they made in a year?. I challenge anyone to look at the quality it displays and say that was an easy task. That is an incredibly tight workflow to accomplish such a feat. It goes on sale October 27th for $19.99 (for PC I believe).