There was a time when top down isometric action games were all the rage. Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, and their multiple clones ruled the PC world with their easy to play methods and sweet loot drops. And since Diablo III won’t see the light of day until 2010 at the earliest, I am going to let you in on the biggest secret in gaming. Well, besides the release date for Diablo III.

This new game comes from former Flagship Studios developers who are best known for Hellgate: London. While Hellgate didn’t turn out so hot, Flagship was working on another game which was in beta when the studio shut down. Mythos could be seen as the spiritual successor to Diablo since most of the developers working on the game have some ties to Blizzard. While Mythos is now in the hands of Namco Bandai, a new studio has formed out of the ashes of Flagship Studios. Runic Games is a small team working hard to put out their own game this fall called Torchlight. I would consider it the spiritual successor to Mythos and it seems to focus on the same ideas that made Diablo so successful: loot drops and randomly generated dungeons. There are three classes to choose from which are the Destroyer, Alchemist, and the Vanquisher.

The Destroyer is classified as an “endless wanderer who is drawn to conflict with his dual wielding blades. Through channeling the power of his ancestors, the Destroyer excels at close-quarter combat and is able to smite his foes with such ferocity as to easily dispatch multiple enemies at once. With a strong sense of virtue, the Destroyer sets out to deal justice with his blades.” An Alchemist on the other hand is your magical character. He can cast spells to tackle enemies from far away and summon minions to help him fight. Finally, the Vanquisher is another ranged DPS (damage per second) class that is an excellent marksman who can use traps to disorient her foes.

Runic isn’t looking to just make a copy of Mythos, though. They are introducing a few new features that will hopefully keep the community invested in the world of Torchlight. They plan on introducing a retirement system that will allow you to “retire” a sufficiently leveled up character — as they call it — and grant your new character with enhanced benefits and perks. Hopefully, we will be able to take our older, more powerful characters out of retirement so all that hard work won’t go to waste. You will also get to fully customize your character and your pet companion, which will level up with you, help you find treasure, fight in battle with you, and carry items. That old favorite “father and son” pastime will also be in the game. Fishing will reward you with rewards and benefits for you and your animal companion. Lastly and possibly the most interesting feature of Torchlight is the editor that will allow the community to fully mod the game, creating and designing their own content. I could see myself logging in each month to see what new maps or quests the users have come up with.

So, have I got you interested in The Little Game That Could? It’s easy to see why a title like Torchlight would fly under the radar. A small development team without the backing of a major publisher and some major high budget games coming out this fall could seriously overshadow our little game that could if we don’t help get the word out. It’s your job as a lover of loot to help spread the word about this game, so we can help cultivate an awesome community around this secret gem of a game!

Tags: Action RPG, Diablo, Flagship Studios, Runic Games, Torchlight

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Features, PC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.