Vaporum is an old-school RPG style game. Games like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and more recently the Legend of Grimrock games. But instead of the same standard dungeon setting, you are dropped into a Steampunk environment. The charm of the game is in it’s storytelling, puzzles, and smooth gameplay.
You start with not knowing anything about who you are, why you are here, and what you are doing. And by finding the collectibles throughout the world, you start to piece together what is going on. There are text collectibles and voice-acted audio diaries. I thought this was a great way to tell the story, and your character responds to the information learned as well.
A polarizing opinion in some games is the implementation of puzzles. Sometimes, there are too many hints and there is no challenge, and other times you are left completely alone to figure out how to begin solving it. Vaporum sides more towards the challenging side of the equation, but I thought there was reasonable context clues to piece things together.The gameplay has a great speed to it. Enemies can tend to surround you, but learning their attack patterns does make it easier. There is a skills system which can unlock new talents, and equipment with varying primary stats and attack styles. There are multiple ways to build your character. There are a variety of difficulty levels, and then extra modifies to give you that really hard old-school feel, or a more casual game.
One thing that the game is missing is replayability. The first playthrough is a great journey, but the second time, it’s the same map. The same enemy locations, the same pitfalls, the same treasures and secrets. It would be nice if the levels could be randomized, to give more replay value, other than just upping the difficulty.
Overall, Vaporum is a very enjoyable game. It can be as easy or as punishing as you’d like, opening it up to a wide audience of players. The aesthetics are amazing, and the story is well-written and well told. I’m looking forward to more from Fatbot games.
