Torchlight will officially release today and is obtainable at the
Torchlight Website! If you've
missed the fanfare surrounding Torchlight now is your chance to get caught up!
Torchlight Background
The team is made up of industry
veterans including Max and Erich Schaefer, two of the co-founders of Blizzard
North, developers of Diablo and Diablo II, Travis Baldree, the project director
for Mythos and creator of FATE, and many other talented individuals.
Torchlight is set in a mining-turned-boomtown situated above a
recently-discovered vein of rich magical ore. The ore is a potent substance that
can be harnessed to grant the wielder great power, but by the same token
imperils the lives of all those around them. There's lots of underworld caverns
and creatures to test your abilities and there seems to be a brighter overtone
to the game despite the screenshots taking place underground (go lava!).
Recently, several big baddies have been coming out from the darkness under
the town. Players will choose from among three character classes, and venture
from the safety of the town of Torchlight into randomly generated dungeon
levels, with a huge variety of creepy monsters, endless variations of loot to
find, and quests to complete. The endless randomization ensures a long-lived
gameplay experience.
Here's a look at the three available classes and their introduction
into Torchlight:
Torchlight Screenshots
Playing Torchlight
We were fortunate enough to have been able to play this game before release
date. We had time to experiment with each class and have spent hours exploring
beneath the city. Here's a list of some of the things you might enjoy in
Torchlight:
- Randomization – Levels are randomly created, so
it never gets boring. By randomly creating a level it's really a different
experience each time you play. Monsters will attack you from different
locations, treasures and puzzles will hold the same intrigue and difficulty
when tracking them down, and items will drop randomly as you face off against
different monsters in different locations on different maps every time.
- Very Simple Interface – The interface is very
intuitive, if you've ever looked at a computer screen before you're going to
find this a snap to pickup and start playing.
- Retirement System – As you rank your character up
and train them you're given the option to retire that character and give NEW
characters that you create certain benefits learned from the old character.
This ads a whole new level of strategy when you retire your Alchemist to play
something else.
- Pets – In Torchlight players can have pets that
will battle alongside them. Pets can fight with you, hold things, and help you
on your journey in a number of ways. It's a comforting feeling having them
there with you, and they AI for pets is developed very well.
- Customization – As soon as you start playing you
begin to differentiate your character from other characters of the same class.
With a pet, treasure drops, and other cosmetic choices you have a unique
character after your first few dungeon crawls.
- Map Editor – Runic Games has embraced the modding
community by including an editor so that allows players to design and share
content. Creating your own maps and then powering through them is really a
blast.
Torchlight should stand out as the only smash'n'bash game with this level of
detail and replay ability in recent history. To find out how you can pickup a
copy of Torchlight visit their official website at:
http://torchlight.perfectworld.com.
