Vaporum Reviews

Ok, I had to quit on the poisoned halls pitfall room - this is just a stupid instant death. I know that they say that a tile lights up and you just need to get to it - several times - BUT I could not see a tile with a light. and after the game asked me for the 5 or 6 time if I would like to reduce the difficulty. It was just enough of this game. There are lots of better games out there.

My highest recommendations for this game, because it's setting, story and atmostphere has a Bioshock like quality, which is meant as a huge compliment. Add to that, that the way you built up your character in this dungeon crawler, opens up for re-plays, where you can try your hand on going another way on either a more or less difficult level. This game is quality over quantity and if you have some spare time, give it a try!

It's pretty puzzle heavy with at least 2-3 per level, and there's around a dozen levels. You get to pick from 4 exo-suit archetypes or in other words, classes. The thauma rig is for magic/gadgets/tech, combat for a dual-wield fast hitting playstyle, heavy for a tanky shield deflecting sponge, and assault for a two-hander berserker where you do more damage once you get below a certain HP level/integrity. Every level you get a circuit/perk point to spend in one of the dozen or so perk trees. Your playstyles can be quite distinct from one another. For weapons you have daggers, swords, maces, two-handed war-hammer, flintlock pistol, flintlock rifle, shields, and gadgets. You can dual-wield the one-handers, but you'll take a big accuracy penalty unless you spec into dual-wielding perks to negate the penalty or you use the gadget that increases accuracy for that weapon. Also, there's enough circuit/perk points to go down 3 trees and get a little into a 4th tree. There are secrets that can be found on each level, and most are the typical did you notice the small obscure little button or did you scan each wall with your mouse? Each secret has some unique and powerful piece of equipment that are very powerful and can be used across several levels. Enemy variety is sufficient. but the move-sets and attack time/cool-down of each can be awkward to deal with especially when they get paired together and you may end up just getting cornered and you have to take every hit. There's real-time combat and a freeze-time combat mode that you can switch to with caps lock. You can evade attacks based on percent chance, block with your shield based on percent chance, physically dodge their attack, and preemptively attack them. There's going to be a lot of trap sections throughout the levels where you get locked in a room with 3-5 enemies starting to surround you. Unless your patient or smart you enough, you'll most likely come across puzzles that you need to look up online or you're just completely lost on how to progress a certain level. Some of them require very precise timing and movement in order to complete, such as having to complete a certain movement pattern practically blind of where you're going because you can't even waste time turning to face where you're going. The story is a throwaway farce and laughable. When I saw the ending I thought, "pft, whatever". How'd the wife and daughter go crazy? Who knows, maybe they inhaled too much fumium.

One of the best dungeon crawlers available. And with an interesting story, Highly recommended.

Ignore the recommendation and Read first: Honestly, the puzzles, the story and the general feel of the game were a bit generic. Nothing too crazy to break your experience and want to stop playing but just underwhelming. It also unfortunately felt like a relatively lazy Bioshock wannabe story-wise (without getting into spoilers). Absolutely no issue with getting inspired from somewhere and wanting to emulate such a masterpiece, just could have been done a lot better. Unlike other people I didnt experience any crashes, so Im sure it's compatibility issue/driver issue. Overall I would recommend it, given how it was the studio's first game. It definitely wasn't a bad attempt and I saw there is a continuation of the story which I will give a try. Just, probably not worth the full price. So if you want to scratch that Legend of Grimmrock itch and have a few extra dollars and this is on sale, that's a good way to do it, although iirc LoG had plenty of free mods that had better puzzles and story overall despite not having a "Fully-voiced main character."