RPGWatch Feature - Vaporum Review

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RPGWatch's Forgottenlor checks out the dungeon crawler Vaporum.

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Since the success of The Legend of Grimrock in 2012, many indie developers have tried their hand at making a first-person grid based dungeon crawler with varied success. While Vaporum might look like a Grimrock clone at first glance, it does enough different to stand on its own feet. First is the rarely used steampunk setting. In addition, Vaporum has a story, and the kind of storytelling it employs was clearly inspired by System Shock and its successors (like Bioshock and Prey). Also, in Vaporum you don't control a party, but a single character and that character's abilities are determined by his rig, a kind of exoskeleton. Lastly, Vaporum has an optional pause system, which lets you tackle combat in either real time, or real time with pause. While doing some different things is fine and good, executing them well is the key. Vaporum is clearly developed with a limited budget, but when one takes that into account it generally has well designed, if not incredibly original elements.