Squirreled away in the back of the Los Angeles Convention Center’s West Hall during E3, Perfect World Entertainment showed off Runic Games’ Torchlight along with their other Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.  Only minutes after putting my hands on this little dungeon crawler had I decided this game had no business being in the back any longer.  

Torchlight by Runic Games is set as a Diablo-esque dungeon-crawling Action RPG, which is actually a good thing since the people behind it are some of the same people behind Diablo and Fate.  The story is that near the small mining town of Torchlight, a rich vein of ore has been found called Ember.  Ember is a mysterious substance that has the power to enchant or corrupt and you and your faithful pet will search the deepest depths to find the answers.

What I loved most about this game was how intuitive it was.  Almost the entire game is played with the mouse.  My left hand, normally poised above the WASD keys, was only lightly hovering above the Tab key to swap out the skill abilities.  There are three classes: the destroyer (read: tank), the alchemist (read: mage) and a third class that is yet to be determined.  I chose the destroyer class and for my pet, I chose the dog over the cat.  The interface was simple and self-explanatory.  Point the mouse, left click to run and select targets to attack with right click your skill-based attacks.  You are allowed two active skills, one that you can readily use and one that is “on-deck,” per se, easily swapped by the aforementioned tab button.  The ‘1’ button is your health potion, ‘2’ is your skill point’s potion and you’re ready to roll.  I immediately was able to jump into a dungeon and start taking skeletons apart with my mighty sword.  Anyone could easily access this content and begin to have fun, and that is one of the beauties of this title.



Marsh Lefler, Lead Developer of Torchlight, walked me through the game.  It was shortly after my descent into the first dungeon that he began to show me that the simplicity is only the front of an extremely customizable, expansive system of controls that you can explore.  As with any dungeon crawler, it’s about the loot, and Torchlight is no exception.  I was pulling new boots, armor and weapons off of my victims right away making the grind seem less daunting as I wound my way through the levels.  

On top of the loot and the gold, you also gain experience and with experience comes new levels, increased stats and skill points you can spend to open up new skills or beef up the skills you already employ.  The skills themselves are widely varied and are useful depending on the situation.  I had an over-the head attack that hit only one monster at a time, useful for boss and elite creatures, but terrible when I was getting overrun with mobs.  That’s when I tabbed to the area of effect attack and chopped down two to three enemies at once.  My favorite, though, was a set of shadow armor that walked with me for a short time mowing down everything in my path.



On top of sweet weapons and skills, you have pets.  The pets attack and defend you as you venture on your quest as well as pick up loot and gold lying on the ground for you.  Each pet will also have their own set of skills that you may employ including an ability to carry items for you and I was told even have the ability to quickly run to town for you and sell the excess items while you continue your adventure.  Lefler also showed me the fishing mini-game that you can occasionally play while you are in a dungeon and obviously near a body of water.  If you are able to catch a fish, you can feed the fish to your pet, and dependent upon the type of fish and the size, your pet can be transformed into another, possibly larger and stronger pet for a period of time (the one I caught lasted 2 minutes).



Torchlight will be originally released as a single player game and then Runic Games plans to then focus on creating the MMO version of the game.  In the meantime, they are bundling an all-inclusive editor in with the single player game to foster the mod community that has been very popular and successful with other PC franchises.  Lefler showed me the editor briefly and it’s simple enough for a guy like me to put together a level of my own and yet extremely sophisticated for those with the knack.  I was very impressed with the depth as he demonstrated linking actions with specific triggers to give your level a unique touch and have it execute everything you envision for it.  Even better was the ability to jump directly into your modded level and give it a test run without having to finish everything first; all the elements drop in including yourself and the monsters.

Overall Torchlight is an impressive take on this genre with its intuitive user interface and design as well as its deep game play and customization.  I look forward to more on Torchlight as it currently has no definite release date, but hopefully we’ll see the single player action by the end of this year.  As soon as it hits, you’ll want to jump in as this mod community explodes with adventure.