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EuroGamer has posted a new interview with Runic Games' Max Schaefer about the company's upcoming action RPG, Torchlight. The game will feature an easy to use interface for players of all skill levels and a level randomizer to ensure each adventure has its own unique blend of monsters, traps, and puzzles.

Torchlight is a ramshackle mining town, where prospectors have hit a mother-lode of the magical resource Ember. As unlikely characters flood in from everywhere, hoping to make their fortunes with picks and shovels or steal them at gunpoint, events take an unusual turn. A discovery is made beneath Torchlight's mines when the ruins of a handful of ancient cultures who had stumbled across this particular seam of Ember in the past are unearthed. All appear to have died out while trying to harvest it. "It's a windfall, but there's something wrong with the set-up," says Schaefer. "There's something corrupting down there that likes to finish off civilisations, and the player has to uncover the truth."

What this translates to is a joyously traditional dungeon-crawler with plentiful quests, stripped-back point-and-click controls that will be second nature to fans of the genre, and three basic classes (Destroyer, Alchemist and Vanquisher - loosely translating to a melee brawler, spellcaster and weapons user, expert in both ranged and close-quarters attacks). Classes direct the way you approach the game, but they don't limit your playing style as much as you might expect. "We don't have class-specific items, so if you find a bow, for example, you'll be able to use it whoever you are," says Baldree. "That said, the right class using the right item will have special perks."

While the town of Torchlight is a fixed hub where you can interact with NPCs and purchase new equipment, the mines beneath it are procedurally generated. "It's kind of the structure of Diablo 1, where there's this one location, and then we have lots of dungeons spreading off from that," says Schaefer. "We've been doing a lot of work on the randomisation stuff. A lot of us worked on the Diablo series prior to Hellgate, so we've done it every which way for the last twelve years.

"What we've come up with is making larger sections of games than we used to. A whole level will be broken down into eight big chunks, and we make several versions of each room so the game can randomly lay it out. But we're still able to architect specific elements within that. It means you can have really well-scripted events with secret rooms and levers and puzzles, while still retaining the randomisation that keeps it fresh. And even within scripted parts, you can set up random things, so that half the time a particular shrine will appear and half the time it won't."

EuroGamer: Torchlight Hands On

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Torchlight

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