Do you like puzzles? Do you like mysteries? Do you like dungeon crawling? You might be in for a treat with Vaporum by developer Fatbot Games and publisher Merge Games then! The gameplay reminds me of the Legend of Grimrock, moving tile by tile and mapping out the level as you push through a variety of challenges.
We begin the game with a short introductory animation describing the unfortunate state of affairs of our protagonist. Like many great stories, we suffer from amnesia, only grasping at vague memories and voices of the past. A shipwreck has robbed us of even more than our memories, for now a giant monolithic structure with auras and gears hijacks our sense of direction. Compelled, we enter the monstrous structure. As far as a plot, this is how the world is presented to us. We need to learn the rest.
Our protagonist is vocal about his enthusiasm to learn more about this place. Notes and audio recordings are scattered throughout the structure. So far, I have an idea about what this place was, and what the Bureau wanted to achieve, but I have much more to explore to piece together. Technological advances always seem like a positive thing at first, and you can gather that from the notes, but something clearly has gone awry. Now mechanical spiders attack on sight and no one is to be found.
Unlike Grimrock, you’ll notice that we are not a team of adventurers, but one man. This makes fighting much easier from a micromanaging point of view, but it can prove challenging when facing down multiple opponents. The console controls may come off frustrating at first, but they grow on you. Moving and looking around are almost like two different actions altogether. And then you add fighting to the mix. You move to the side and swing/shoot. Not too complicated, right? If you get overwhelmed, you can freeze time like a mini-pause, so that you can figure out what you need to do. When it comes to interacting with objects, the game snaps to what I’m looking for, which is very convenient. Item management and usage is also something to get used to. It’s not a bad feature, being able to open your inventory, select a key, and tap the lock.
There is a level progression too. Other than moving from place to place! When you kill enough enemies, you collect “fumium” to raise your level, allowing access to perks. Your path seems mostly dependent on the rig that you choose to wear in the very beginning of the game. They all have different focuses for different strategies. One focuses more on utility (recharging energy for special abilities) and another is for building up resistances to duration effects. I chose the combat-heavy one.
I think the sound effects are pretty good too. The opening theme caught my attention from the start, and I liked it. I didn’t think “Steampunk” right away. Smacking robots sounds more or less what you would expect. The voice acting is good too, but there are some moments where I thought it could use some work. As far as I remember nothing had a muted sound. You can hear your footsteps, grinding gears, sliding boxes, creeping enemies, etc.
I think that Vaporum is interesting. The maps/areas aren’t randomly generated, but the replayability comes from the builds, or the type of rig you choose in the beginning. There are different enemy types to keep things somewhat fresh. I don’t find it excessively challenging, but running into hot steam might kill you faster than anything else thrown at you. I think a fair rating for this title is an 8.5 out of 10.
Check Out the Vaporum Trailer:
Vaporum is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
Xbox One Review
I like to think of myself as the average Joe who grew up alongside video games. I have fun playing strategy games, RPGs, shooters, sandboxes, the whole shebang! Every game provides an experience whether it strikes you as profound, mundane, or someplace in between. I'd like to weigh in my two cents before you spend a single penny.
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