By John Walker on July 7th, 2011.
A million is a big number. For instance, if you put a million hairbrushes in a pile end to end it would reach Pluto. That’s not true, but it serves as a useful illustration for a million being a big number. Still not got it? Well, imagine a tennis ball. Now imagine a million of them. See, that’s a lot of tennis balls! Also, Torchlight has sold a million copies.
Stockings of rage
By Alec Meer on June 27th, 2011.
The third siege of dungeons arrived a little while back, with Obsidian taking the reins of the Gas-Powered Games-created loot’n'kill fandango. I’ve been frantically clicking my mouse button at it for the last few days – an act which I have now transmuted into some words.
First point of interest for me in any dungeon crawler: can I summon animals? Silently beating up monsters in rock corridors gets pretty lonely, after all. Also, I’m really very lazy – if there’s some companion animal doing half the damage for me I don’t need to press so many number keys. Get to it, my furry friend.
Dungeon Siege III delivers on this front, at least. My stocking-wearing gunwoman can summon a spectral hound to antagonise foes while she snipes them from afar. On top of that, one of the AI-controlled companions (only one of which you can have with you at any one time) can summon a flaming hound. It’s doggy carnage out there.
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By Kieron Gillen on July 1st, 2010.
News arrives! VG247 and Shacknews are travelling across the land, spreading news that jaunty tribute blog PC Gamer has revealed a couple of choice quotes from Runic’s President Travis Baldree their new issue. The topic? The forthcoming Torchlight MMO. Key points would be “our vision is to have an MMO that plays as close to single player as we can get it.” – as in, soloable, highly paced, hordes of monsters falling before you. Interestingly, while it’ll be funded my microtransactions, Travis also admits he’ll never buy microtransaction items himself “I’m that kind of player. And the game has to be enjoyable for me, too. We don’t want our monetisation stuff to offer ways to skip the game because the game is boring.” GOOD! I HATE BORING!
By Jim Rossignol on May 18th, 2010.
Runic, the folks behind Diablo-like dungeon-crawler Torchlight – which we talked about favourably when it arrived – have done rather well for themselves. It seems that Torchlight shifted 500k copies, and set Runic up to sell a large stake of themselves to Chinese MMO-imperialists Perfect World (for $8.4m, which would buy a lot of Peggles.) All of which bodes well for the previously mooted Torchlight MMO, which Runic talked about back in 2009. It must seems like Flagship was just a bad dream… (Via Le Shack.)
By Alec Meer on November 11th, 2009.
Dunno about you, but I got pretty burned-out after a few days of psychotic grinding at Torchlight, feeling that, despite the fun I’d had, everything had gotten too samey. So the news of the impending editor, and the vast glut of moddery it promises, is good news – it hopefully means the game’s rather limited environments can be shaken up some, and we can have a broader, longer-lived experience. Ideally, one with different colours of cat too. Brown is boring!
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By Alec Meer on November 5th, 2009.
Back from a quasi-week in foreign climes, I return to discover Eurogamer has published some writing they recklessly hired me to write. There’s a preview of Assassin’s Creed 2, detailing what I found when I nosed at the first couple of hours of the game, and perhaps more interestingly, there’s my review of Torchlight. In it, I claim that absolutely everything Walker said it about the game here was embarrassingly wrong and that we should all fire cannonballs at his face. Or did I largely agree with him? I forget. Let’s fire cannonballs at him anyway. There was also supposed to be a preview of Avatar up there, but it has mysteriously not arrived. I’ll have a little cry until it does.
By John Walker on October 30th, 2009.
Runic’s new action role-player Torchlight has occupied my week. Does their ultra-sleek and approachable dungeon crawler manage to find that sweet Diablo-shaped spot? Read on to find out wot I think.
By Jim Rossignol on October 28th, 2009.
The demo for Runic Games’ charming-looking hack ‘n slash RPG Torchlight is up on Steam, and should be appear on non-Steam mirrors soon too. The full game is also out this week on Runic Games own site, and we’ve been delving into the randomly generated dungeon levels so that we can offer our own verdict later in the week.
By John Walker on October 9th, 2009.
In their attempt to write a developer diary for Torchlight, Runic games managed this:
“Dear Diary, I think I will make a kick-ass game. Yes! That’s all for now. Lootfully yours, Runic Games.”
Fortunately they instead chose to elaborate further in video form, and you can see it below.
By John Walker on September 23rd, 2009.
Runic/Perfect World have this evening revealed a new class for next month’s dungeon crawler, Torchlight: the Alchemist. And they’ve done so with a really rather pretty video, which you can see below. The new Diablo-ish from veteran Travis Baldree (Fate, Mythos) has me very much looking forward to the 27th October when it comes out.
By Jim Rossignol on September 15th, 2009.
We’re particularly excited about Runic Games’ upcoming dungeon crawler, Torchlight. It’s looking incredibly slick and colourful, just the kind of thing that jiggles the lock on our treasure chest. Seeing it in action gives us a little more to be excited about, and thankfully some more in-game footage has appeared. This time it’s showing off one of the classes, The Vanquisher, who seems like badass lady-ninja type. There are also giant purple spiders. Go take a look.
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