Vaporum

A dungeon of brass and steam
Dungeon Crawler is a different take on classic pen&paper RPG. Playing out in a highly restricted place (say, a dungeon) it puts emphasis on combat and solving puzzles rather than the story. In the classic software adaptations, dungeons are viewed from the first perspective and the player controls a team of adventurers who slowly traverse the map, one field at a time. While Dungeon Crawlers have a venerable history in gaming, dating all the way back to the early ‘90s, they were at large forgotten. That is until Legends of Grimrock brought the genre back to the attention of modern gamers in 2012. Vaporum is up to the very same task. The game aims to deliver a modern take on an old-school formula, but at the same time, it squarely sets itself apart from the competition – with a steampunk setting.
The game takes place in Arx Vaporum, a gigantic tower that reaches high above the clouds, risen in the middle of the sea. The protagonist is a lost man devoid of memory, who somehow happened upon the structure’s front door. With a choice between a bare rock amidst the waves and slowly opening doors to the behemoth ahead, it would be a very short game if the main character didn’t choose the latter. The story starts off as very mysterious and slowly gains, err, steam as the player slowly pieces together the events that took place within the tower. Without getting into details, the story is okay at best, as once it starts spilling the beans things get highly predictable.
Fear not though, as the setting is the true meat of the game after all. Vaporum is easily the best looking game made with Unity engine I have seen thus far. Visuals of the inside of the tower along with enemy designs are what really drive the steampunk home. Brass and wood, cogwheels and valves, a maze of pipes delivering steam to power the curious machinery, every section of the game has a different visual theme, and it’s great. The atmosphere is completed by all kinds of automatons that roam the tower – helicopter drones, spider walkers or steam golems, all nail the steampunk feel of the game. For diversity’s sake, there is also a selection of organic enemies who while don’t fit the aesthetic so well, are a vital addition to the game’s mechanics and have a solid grounding in the story.
Dance with me
The gameplay of Vaporum is quite something else. Curiously, it manages to be sluggish and frantically arcade at the same time. Movement in the game is highly restricted – in a turn-like fashion your character moves one field at a time, and even simple turning your character is a separate action. The same rules apply to all the enemies, and each one of them has a specific pattern to their movement and attacks. Learning those is absolutely vital, as the only effective way to fight the opposition is to outmanoeuvre it. One field at a time you circle, sidestep, and lunge forward – everything to avoid getting cornered. It is no easy feat, as often you will face entire groups of enemies while having a very limited space to work with. Bear in mind, that even a single foe can handout a serious punishment when fought face-to-face. Vaporum features a tactical mode that lets you freeze the time, allowing for a breather and more thought-through play, but even then to survive is to dance, dance away for your life.
Of flintlocks and pressure plates
While nimble footwork is a crucial skill, it won’t get you too far unless you squeeze a warhammer-sized bash over the head between the dodges. The arsenal is acceptably diverse - there are blunt and bladed melee weapons followed by one- and two-handed flintlock firearms. Those are complemented by gadgets – absolutely-not-magic as it doesn’t exactly fit into steampunk. Regardless of the principle behind it, those technological marvels allow you to spew fire and cast lightning. Admittedly though, there is a wide variety of utility ones as well. They range anywhere from temporary stat boosts and shields to tricky ones, such as decoy or swapping places with an enemy.
On the very start of the game, you will get to choose 1 out of 4 rigs - highly advanced exoskeletons that will turn a squishy human being of a protagonist into a killing machine that can face the dangers of Arx Vaporum. Said rig is essentially a character class. While each rig has a uniform skill tree available, they come with specific passive effects that encourage developing certain skills over the others. Alas, there is a bulky Tank, a hard-hitting skirmisher, a thaumaturge (not-mage) and a jack of all trades. Choose wisely, as during a full run you can only max out 3 skill trees and there are 12 available.
True to dungeon crawling roots, the game is as much about combat as it is about the puzzles. Making up roughly half of the game time, the player is facing all sorts of brain teasers of varied complexity. Many of them are environmental, pushing crates around to access a hidden button, toying with pressure plates or careful observation to figure out inner workings of a mechanism are commonplace in Vaporum. The game does get a little bit more combat-oriented towards the end, nonetheless, there is a unique riddle on every level. On top of that, there are many secrets in the game, most of them are opened by pressing a hidden switch, and some are hidden in truly ingenious places. Being on the lookout is exceptionally worthwhile, as many of the best items in Vaporum are in secret chests.
A cracked pipe
For all its old-school goodness there are a few grains of salt Vaporum has to be taken with. The developers gained intimate knowledge of how to use the game’s restricted movement as an advantage. Vaporum is a difficult game, a meticulously built maze designed to allow the enemies to approach you from an unexpected angle and at an adverse moment. The creators know very well how to make the game as much of a pain as humanly possible, and at times, it really shows. Some of the puzzles and fights can be exceedingly frustrating and really get you stuck indefinitely. Exactly at third of the game is a level that makes for a turning point in that regard. Up until there, Vaporum teaches you that secrets yield optional extra rewards. On level 4 you need to find secrets to simply progress the game, including shoving your face into a blatant death-trap to try poking on the inside of it. The game doesn’t ever go this batshit crazy again, but if you were ever to drop this title, this is the moment.
Addmitedly though, it’s about the only major complaint I have. Vaporum is otherwise a brilliant indie title that tackles an obscure genre and looks good while doing it. True to the old-school design, the game is unrelenting in its difficulty, so use that quick save as you will be dying, a lot. Based on your skill, Vaporum takes about 12 hours to beat. The game encourages you to do several runs, though the replayability isn’t so great. Nothing in Arx Vaporum is randomly generated and the puzzles can be solved only once, then they are just roadblocks. You might be tempted to try other rig or build, and there are options to make the next run extra spicy. No map? Only a single save at the beginning of the level? Brutal difficulty to make the weakest of enemies hit like a truck? If you enjoy your games hardcore, Vaporum will gladly provide. Ultimately, I highly recommend this title to any fan of steampunk aesthetic, and should you happen to enjoy indie games at the same time, Vaporum easily becomes a must-play.

If you're a fan of Grimrock, you're in the right place. While I have a million complaints, much of this game was very enjoyable. For someone who likes this genre, it's worth playing. I'd say this a good game with a million obvious problems that stop it from being great.
Puzzles:
Maybe the most obvious one is these designers clearly have no idea how to make a meaningful puzzle. For nearly every puzzle, the best strategy is to repeatedly bash your face against the wall until one of the available options solves it. Try this button first - nope, I guess this button; nope, next one, but which button is second?!
Close to none of them are about being clever, and instead get solved by guessing in what order something should be done. This leaves them painfully unsatisfying to solve and instead feeling like a waste of time. Other puzzles, like the slow and annoying box puzzles, are completely unsuited for the perspective you're given in this game and feel like a chore. They turn a gradeschool-level puzzle into slogging guess-and-check, or getting graph paper and drawing out every step for 20 minutes. There's also the classic "put codes in notes people just leave around for some reason" trope. Thanks a lot, doom 3.
Eighty percent of the puzzles in this game are truly a joke in regards to intelligent design. If you want puzzles that challenge your actual problem solving, you are in the wrong place. These puzzles are like work that allow you to progress to actual gameplay which is the fighting and character growth.
Combat/rpg mechanics:
Generally decent/good.
You'll enjoy putting skill points into expertise of your choice although they are all passive. Weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, etc. Some are a bit more interesting but not many. They're mostly a little bland, but it's still fun building up your character how you want to and seeing the growth. You also choose a suit at the beginning of the game that dictates what your character's strengths are. You can choose one that's more defensive, offensive, caster-oriented, and so on. This choice is permanent. They give passive bonuses to related attributes.
The combat is mostly what you would expect but not bad. The 1v1 square dancing that's always in these grid-based crawlers can get tiresome, but I've yet to see a game find a way to stop that from being tedious at times. You get two hands to hold guns, melee weapons and shields, plus a few pieces of armor for equipment bonuses. There's also a handful of trinket slots that let you cast different magics at the cost of regenerating energy. You only get one character which can make it feel like something is missing, but it isn't necessarily bad.
Energy, unfortunately, is pretty stupid. Never should the way forward in a game be to stand still for several minutes while you regenerate a resource. Energy regenerates itself, always. Now imagine you're starting to run low on supplies, or maybe you're totally stuck somewhere. Instead of refining your strategy, thinking of a new plan, or just playing better, your best bet is to walk away for 2 minutes until you have full energy. This is a bad system. People are passively forced into it either by wanting to be safe with their supplies, or because they're in trouble. This should never be a possible part of someone's strategy, yet the tools are here. Tell someone they don't have to wait around all you want to... it does not change the fact that to get ahead or make more fruitful progress, we get rewarded by wasting our time just like with most secrets.
Still the combat is fun enough. The enemies have aoe attacks, projectiles, etc, in a thought-out enough way that you at least have to play a bit of chess in your fights. I will say some enemies have so much hp that in cramped rooms there isn't really any room for strategy because you can't move enough.
Secrets:
There is once again nothing special going on here. Good secrets need to reward an attention to detail. Instead, what you usually get here is mindlessly staring at every surface looking for clickable spots. This can be passable, but only if something really stands out or makes a smart person realize it's time to check. Most of the secret clickable buttons are too close to being visually the same as something you see THOUSANDS OF in the game. You need to orchestrate a thinker down the right path more often. You need to make sure a person who pays attention might notice a secret, instead of rewarding people for wasting time waving their mouse over every wall.
The secrets basically boil down to finding a weird door/dead end that doesn't open, staring at walls until you find a button, or pushing a box and once again looking for a button because you see nothing there. The secret design too heavily promotes mindlessly waving the cursor over every wall more than it promotes paying attention. They are also sometimes just another version of the puzzles I was annoyed about above.
Writing/narration
Ranges from fine to terrible.
The story progression is enjoyable enough, but the voice acting and writing is not. The story is extremely predictable and done a thousand times. I won't spoil it, but you've heard it before. I will say listening to audio logs is fun even if you know where they're going and the acting is bad.
I am constantly put off by the way the main character and audio logs speak to make sure you understand the story or that the thing you just picked up is for a puzzle. Assume people have a brain instead of forcing the main character, who is alone, to tell me the thing with a broken handle might need a new handle. The same problem happens with the characters' narration/storytelling. Assume people have brains instead of making characters act like they aren't even real people, saying things out loud nobody would ever say. If you give puzzle hints by breaking this rule, there's an issue at hand.
In short:
This team needs to make a ton of improvements for their next game. But they're on the right path towards creating really awesome dungeon crawlers. I do like the game in general, but too many things are just silly to get a serious commendation out of me.

Excellent game in this genre. With the addition of Stop Time Mode, you can play it more like a turn based game. Going through it now for a brutal ninja run, and I can't imagine doing this run without it. Respect for anyone that got that done before stop time was put in.

This game is ripoff of LoG (Legend of Grimrock). And that`s a good thing! It`s indeed the same team... i think.. i guess...
Anyway! The menu layout is the same, the secret and hints "beep" is the same as LoG.
Since LoG is the masterpiece of the genre, it`s a good stuff. It`s a LoG inside of a steampunk building.
After 27 hours I finally beat the game (where around 20 hours I`ve spentstaring at walls for secrets), and I must say: The story is good (from the log files you find along the way), the ending is... not crappy, just not very good. The fighting system has a "stop time" feature, which can make the fighting way easier if you get used to it. The secrets are hard as LoG to find... it`s a worth to play game. I MAY try harder levels later.
If you`re looking for "a game like LoG", this is the one! All the other`s I`ve been looking in steam seem like crap.
Even though I like finding things by myself, there are 2 things I would like to know beforehand and I will tell these 2 hints (NOT SPOILERS) that may help (you can stop reading here if you don`t want to know)

in LoG you used to fall on every trap door, because even hurting yourself, it could lead to secrets or even game playthrough. In Vaporium ALL HOLES ARE DEADLY. So don`t even try (ok, except for just one, which will be VERY specified that you need to go there, so don`t worry). Also, while searching for secrets, pay also attention to the corner pillars, not the walls itself.

Vaporum does justice to dungeon crawlers showcasing to a younger audience the beauty of a now dying subgenre. I definitely recommend this to everyone who is looking for this kind of gameplay experience in preparation for a prequel that seems even more ambitious.
Pros:
+ Well paced albeit predictable story
+ The graphics hold up
+ Great atmosphere
+ Intricate level design full of cool puzzles and deadly traps
+ Solid progression system
+ Engaging combat

Cons:
– Overreliance on ambushes
– Pixel hunting
– No health bar for enemies
Read the full review at:

If you liked the Grimrocks, you will like this game. Some enemies are overwhelmingly strong while others are more of a nuisance, but the combination of the them is what makes some of the fights great. Secrets are pretty damn hard to find without a guide, but the final handful of fights are a ton of fun and absolute slug fests. Story isnt bad either, tho not the highlight imo.

If you like legend of grimrock 1 and 2 you'll enjoy Vaporium. Having more audio narration really helps one feel more immersed in a story.