Torchlight is an action dungeon crawler RPG developed by Runic Games and published by Perfect World, released for PC as a digital download on October 2009 and re-released as a retailed boxed version in January 2010 by Encore, Inc, with JoWood Entertainment releasing the box in Europe in April 2010. It was released on Steam - this port developed by World Domination Industries - on May 12, 2010, while the Xbox Live Arcade version was then released on March 9, 2011. A Linux port was also eventually released.
At the time of its release, it was considered to be the game for Diablo fans who were still waiting for the release of Diablo III, with Diablo II having been released many years earlier. Despite this being a reason many people jumped on board with this game, it has developed a strong following, which has led to a sequel, aptly named Torchlight II, released for PC on September 2012.
Plot[]
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In the world in which Torchlight resides, a mysterious ore called Ember has the power to imbue people and items with magical power. Many new occupations rise up thanks to the substance's existence, and certain places becoming booming mining towns thanks to the discovery of Ember veins below their surface - one of these towns is the town of Torchlight, which has a rich vein that has made all of its citizens rich. Adventurers from near and far have been drawn to the small settlement seeking the magical substance and the enchanted items that can be created through its use.
One such individual who traveled to the caverns beneath Torchlight is the alchemist Alric - but when he disappears for some time, his seer apprentice Syl and her mercenary companion Brink travel to Torchlight to find him. Instead of finding him however they are embroiled in combat with a mysterious creature named Shade. The player arrives at this time and Shade escapes with Brink running in after him. Syl is injured and decides to stay in town, but she recruits the player to go after brink and help find Master Alric.
As the player descends, they quickly learn that Alric has been corrupted by the taint of the Ember located here, and the player finds a passage into an older, crypt-like chamber below. As they travel deeper and deeper, they discover that the entire dungeon is a "layer cake of ruined civilizations." Upon fighting through literally tens of thousands of monsters and finally reaching the lowest reaches of the main caverns, the player must confront Alric in the Black Palace. He escapes to the tunnels directly below the palace, which is the lair of Ordrak, a giant mutated dragon that is the source of the Ember's corruption. He awakens Ordrak by sacrificing his own life but the player is able to kill the creature. The player decides to stay a while in town to prepare for an upcoming battle that they foresee occurring at some point in the future.
With the death of Ordrak, two creatures emerge from the crypts on the outskirts of town, which has a further and far deeper set of dungeon tunnels known as the Shadow Vault. No further story progress occurs in these dungeon levels however.
All three classes appear as the three main influential NPC characters in the game's sequel.
Gameplay[]
The game plays very similar to Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series. The player controls a lone hero who explores a series of randomized dungeons, fighting large numbers of enemies and collecting equipment, gold, and other loot (although it should be noted that the player has a pet that can fight with them, and each class can summon allies using the right tech trees; they can also permanently keep Brink in their party after beating the game once by only delving into the Shadow Vault). The game also features a single town - the titular Torchlight - which serves as a hub, to which the player character can periodically return to buy and sell items to NPC vendors and obtain quests from one of three characters (five with the opening of the Shadow Vault).
As the chosen protagonist delves into the dungeon, a series of quests are presented which involve battling unique bosses that advance the main storyline. Optionally, the player may take on side quests, random quests or visit branching dungeon areas. The graphics are three dimensional and viewed from an overhead perspective, similar to the isometric perspective used in the original Diablo. On personal computers, the game is controlled using a point-and-click mouse interface and keyboard hotkeys, while the Xbox Live Arcade version uses a controller and has a completely redesigned user interface.
The game generates each level of the dungeon by assembling modular "chunks" of the game environment. Each chunk is designed by hand and may be composed of multiple rooms. They can contain scripted events and interactive objects such as levers that open secret doors or cause bridges to move. This approach to level generation is intended to create dungeons with more purposeful design, instead of environments that simply look like "crossword puzzles that have been extruded upwards."
As in Fate, the player has a permanent pet which fights alongside and can carry and sell loot. The initial pet can be a wolf dog, a bobcat or, in the retail version of the game, a ferret; the player can feed fish to their pet to temporarily transform it into different creatures with varied effects.
Also present in the game is a retirement system, in which the player can pass on an heirloom item from an old character to a newly created one, likened to a New Game Plus game mode. Doing so permanently removes the retired character from play, and all items still on the character are lost, as is their gold, which cannot be transfered between characters.
Torchlight features three character classes:
- The Destroyer is a wandering warrior skilled in melee combat, although he also has the ability to call upon ancestral spirits to produce magical effects. He can be compared to any warrior-type class found in typical RPGs.
- The Alchemist is a spellcaster drawn to the magical power of Ember. He can fire blasts of magic and electricity from his specialized focus glove and can summon imps and steampunk-styled robotic Golems (the Alchemical Golem and Beam Golem, respectively). He can be compared to the Necromancer class in Diablo II.
- The Vanquisher is an elite city guard, sent undercover to investigate the town of Torchlight. She specializes in ranged weapons and can also use traps against her foes. She can be compared to the Assassin class in Diablo II.
The player develops their character by placing points into class-specific skill trees. Further, there is a separate category of spells that any character can learn from scrolls, regardless of class.
Development[]
Torchlight was developed by a team led by Travis Baldree, who had previously designed Fate. For this game, he was joined by Max and Eric Shaefer, who were co-designers of both Diablo and Diablo II. The team that worked with Baldree had also worked on the original incarnation of 'Mythos, a game that is currently unreleased as of December 2016.
Pre-production began in August 2008, shortly after the dissolution of former company Flagship Studios, where Baldree had been working on Mythos. With this dissolution, Travis founded Runic Games was founded by Travis and a number of veterans from Blizzard North and Flagship: Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer and Peter Hu. The "entire Flagship Seattle team", which consisted of 14 people and had been working with Baldree on Mythos signed on to Runic Games at the time of its formation.
Having lost the rights to continue work on Mythos, the newly-formed Runic team chose to develop a new game as a way to "finish what [they] started," although because of legality issues they had to start over from scratch, unable to utilize any of the code or art assets that had been used for Mythos. From the very get-go, the company's ultimate goal was the development of an MMORPG that had gameplay similar to both Mythos and Diablo, but before tackling such a huge idea they decided it best to "go back to [their] roots" with a smaller game that they could refine and polish within a relatively short production cycle. This single player game was intended to introduce the world of Torchlight to players before hopefully going ahead with an MMO (which was ultimately canceled in 2012). Furthermore, it allowed the team to get a released game under their belts sooner than if they had immediately started on the MMO (which also would have quickly ate resources and company income due to the costs of keeping servers up and running). Full production on the game started around November 2008, giving the entire project a development period of approximately 11 months. As of July 2009, 25 team members were working at Runic Games.
In a feature article on Gamasutra, art director Jason Beck explained that Torchlight's art style was inspired by comic books and classic film animation, using stylized character designs combined with painterly background textures. The developers have described the game's look as inspired by "Dragon's Lair meets The Incredibles." The team chose to give the game world a lighter fantasy tone to make it more inviting, rather than utilizing a "dark and gritty" style.
The game uses the OGRE open source 3D graphics engine and CEGUI system for GUI, although the rest of the game engine was built by Runic. The game was designed to run on a wide range of systems (including a 'netbook' mode) and does not require shaders.
Reception[]
Torchlight received positive reviews; the PC release currently holds a score of 83 out of 100 on Metacritic and 84.97% on GameRankings while the Xbox 360 release holds a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic and 83.32% on GameRankings.
The game won the Best Debut Game Award at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards.