Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Indie VAPORUM - Steampunk Dungeon Crawler

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
http://steamcommunity.com/games/629690/announcements/detail/1457336803402360394

Help Us Design New Rig & Circuit


969c341adc9cbcc9aeebd97d85f98af4eae2e4f2.png


Hey guys and gals!

We're thinking of expanding the game's RPG features by adding a new rig (4th) and a new circuit (10th).

We have some ideas, but because you've shown interest and provided us with great feedback on many issues so far, we'd like you to take part in designing these features! We will choose & mix & match the best design(s) and add them to the game in one of the following patches, along with adding the authors' names to the credits.

The new rig should provide something unique to allow for a new playstyle, something interesting. Re-using some of the mechanics already in the game might work well, but perhaps a new, refreshing mechanic would be more interesting. I'm pretty sure you can come up with crazy & compelling ideas, unlike us for whom it's hard to think outside the box after 2 years of development. :)

The new circuit (skill tree) should add depth and allow the player to improve their build in a unique way. There should be little to no overlapping bonuses with other circuits already in the game. Each circuit has 3 passive skills: one unlocked automatically at rank 3, and then you choose one out of two at rank 5. These can be anything, on-hit effects, triggerable effects, large stat boosters... imagination is the limit!

Also, share this among your friends! You never know who comes up with a genius idea, no matter if they play Vaporum or not! :)

Looking forward to your ideas!
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,071
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
Both Grimrocks are among my favourite games since the new millenium. Bought this one, about 2 hours in and loving it. Usually I'm not big on ***punk setting but so far it all feels quite natural. Itemization is good and a few nice touches - choosing your "class" as different biosuits. Clever.

I appreciate they spiced up the combat, I actually liked Grimrock "dancing" at all but Vaporum is even better. Puzzles are on the obvious side but it's early on, that's normal. Looking fwd to playing on.
 
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
3,059
Location
Brazil
Divinity: Original Sin
I was in the boiling point level. After the patch they released today, you can reload all of your saves, but if you try to change to another map/leel, the game enters a infinite loading screen, making progress impossible. I don't know If I restart the game it will happen, but it happens with all my saves. I won't restart. I was enjoying this, but now I have to put it aside until they fix it.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
http://steamcommunity.com/games/629690/announcements/detail/1457336803403200088

Patch #1 (09-10-2017)

Hey guys! We just uploaded a patch, adding some requested game options, slight difficulty balancing, and bugfixing. Enjoy!

  • Difficulty changes:
    • Final boss health: -15%
    • Acid Roach:
      • Health: -18%
      • Acid pool damage: -16%
    • All roaches can now drop Repair Kits. This was disabled, for some obscure reason.
    • Decreased the difficulty of some of the hardest encounters in the Haunted (L03) and Librarian (L04) levels.
      • Note: For this to take effect, you have to load an autosave or quicksave in the previous level (so end of L02) and then continue to L03, or to just start a new game.
  • Added new options:
    • Invert mouselook: You can now invert the up-down mouselook.
    • Mouselook sensitivity.
    • Toggle idle camera animation: When you remain still for a while, the camera starts looking around. You can toggle this now.
    • Field of view slider.
    • Phonodiary auto-play: You can toggle whether you want phonodiaries to automatically play or not.
    • Aspect ratio filter added for 21:9 (2.33:1). Set the filter to “All” if you don’t see your resolution listed in the list.
  • Fixed a dead-end in the Office level (thanks TurnSpender!). See this: http://steamcommunity.com/app/629690/discussions/0/1519260397794465258/.
  • Fixed: Hardware cursor flickers while mouselooking.
  • Fixed: Restoring HP and EP is not 100% correct in rare cases.
  • Squashed a few other nasty bugs. (No roaches were harmed! That’s up to you guys!)
 
Joined
Apr 19, 2008
Messages
3,059
Location
Brazil
Divinity: Original Sin
I was in the boiling point level. After the patch they released today, you can reload all of your saves, but if you try to change to another map/leel, the game enters a infinite loading screen, making progress impossible. I don't know If I restart the game it will happen, but it happens with all my saves. I won't restart. I was enjoying this, but now I have to put it aside until they fix it.

Important to say they released a hotfix for this bug already and things got back to normal...
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
http://www.vaporum-game.com/2017/10/23/difficulty-poll-results/

Difficulty Poll Results

Hey guys!

Recently, we put up a survey to see what you think about the Vaporum’s difficulty and the game in general. To this day, we’ve received 180 responses which far exceeds what I personally expected! So, what you actually think about Vaporum? Let’s see! :)

Which one is your favorite rig?
RIG %
Combat Rig 38%
Thauma Rig 41%
Heavy Rig 21%


As expected, the Heavy Rig trails behind the two evenly matched offensive rigs. Understandably, offense is more fun for most people, but some of you out there on the forums claim the Heavy Rig is by far the best of all three, so I guess we’re fine here. Besides, the more options the better, right?

What difficulty level did you play on the first time?
DIFFICULTY %
Casual 3%
Easy 6%
Normal 58%
Hard 28%
Brutal 5%


In general, you tend to aim for the higher difficulty, despite the game being quite hard even on normal.

Do you find the difficulty level appropriate for its name?
ACCURATE? %
Yes, it is more or less accurate. 73%
No, it should be easier. 19%
No, it should be harder. 8%


This was our greatest concern prior to release. Will the game be frustratingly hard? Will people drop it after just 30 minutes because they die 10 times in the first level? Turns out, most of you feel the difficulty is okay which gave us a huge relief.

If you found the game too easy or too hard, did you adjust the difficulty level for better experience?
CHANGE? %
The difficulty was okay. 47%
Yes, I changed it. 10%
No, I did not change it. 35%
No, I did not change it and stopped playing. 8%


This is interesting. 35% find the game a little too hard or too easy, but keep playing on the same difficulty level. Perhaps the lower or higher level would be too big a change?

How often did you get into a deadlock situation with little health and no Repair Kits, so you could not continue playing?
DEADLOCK %
Never 51%
Rarely 23%
Average 14%
Often 8%
All the time! 4%


Due to the harsh design of health management in our game, where when you run out of resources, there are very few ways to regain health, we were getting quite some feedback about you getting stuck out there. We thought this was a major issue, but the survey shows it’s not as big of a deal. Still, we did make some changes in Patch #1 to reduce the likeliness of getting deadlocked.

How much do you like the game (review rating)?
On the scale of 1-10, the average rating you give the game stands at a whopping 8.6, while 31% rate the game at 10/10 and 1% give the game 5/10 (lowest recorded rating).

All this information is very valuable to us. Thank you all who took part in the survey!
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
Finally got round to finishing last night - probably the best single character crawler I've played in the post Grimrock world.

The designers really tried hard to counter the combat dance effect with their level and encounter design. They did a good job of starting you as a lonely scrub and then by the end letting you become a powerhouse spamming powers everywhere. Itemisation is a bit cumbersome but manageable.

The puzzles were generally pretty easy to negotiate and I only found myself completely flummoxed a few times. I'm not sure about the couple of occasions they tried to distract you from solutions by adding red herrings though - I don't think that was necessary. Also at one stage you're expected to jump down a pit even though every other pit in the game is an instant-deathtrap - not very intuitive even if they tried to audibly signpost it.

Storyline is pretty vague and the player's amnesia is not very well explained. Despite similarities to Bioshock there's no big "Would you kindly..." payoff here. It also uses notes/audio diaries to propel the story which is probably my least favourite method of storytelling in video games. Your opponent in the final boss battle is probably a first for the video game industry though...makes me wonder if a designer was going through issues!

Recommended - it's not quite up to Grimrock standards but it will certainly fill a gap.
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,071
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
The designers really tried hard to counter the combat dance effect with their level and encounter design.

Confirmed. The encounter design is miles above Grimrock.

Are the puzzle as plentiful and annoying as in Grimrock?

From what I've seen (about 4 hours in) puzzles are not crazy. In Grimrock 2 some puzzles are rage inducing, not here. But it may get more diabolical further on.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
From what I've seen (about 4 hours in) puzzles are not crazy. In Grimrock 2 some puzzles are rage inducing, not here. But it may get more diabolical further on.

Puzzles start very simple in the first levels, but now that I've arrived to level 8, I can safely say some of them are pretty tough.

The game's visuals are really good and set a good mood; I'd go as far as in modern-grid-rpgs-Grimrock era, this game has the best visuals and tileset variety. Every level felt unique and different from the previous ones, even if many assets are obviously reused as in all other games.

The combat has its charms, but with a single character there isn't much depth about it. You won't be 2-steps dancing all that much due to the encounters design, but moving around all the time you will, it's definitely not a game where you can tank any of the monsters by staying on the same tile.

I have mixed feelings about map design. Overall it's too linear to my taste. Most of the levels are simply about unlocking a door / mechanism to get to the next one. It's usually done by reaching a room that gets split in 2/3/4 corridors, each leading to a new section of the level where you have to gather a key / item to unlock the path. Needless to say, it gets old pretty quickly and with few exceptions, all levels are self-contained so you won't do any back-tracking either, it's a totally linear structure.

Secrets are really hard to spot in this game, and you don't have any skill or help to make it easier. Expect to look at every nook & cranny ( and there are tons ) if you want to figure out secrets. I also don't like that some of these secrets are mandatory to continue progression in some levels.

Voice acting is really good IMO and the story pretty decent for a grid-based game. Lots of audio logs and voice messages to collect. For a small indy game that couldn't afford cut-scenes or actors it's probably the best way they could have done it anyways.

Definitely worth a buy if you like grid-based RT rpgs and don't mind the single-character aspect, which is probably the weakest part of the game - it's even less of an RPG than Grimrock 1 IMO.
 
Last edited:

MortalMan

Barely Literate
Joined
Dec 15, 2017
Messages
3
There were two updates recently for Vaporum, and this new one adds new exo rig!

Hey guys! As promised, we are rolling out a new patch on this important date in the dungeon crawl community — the 30th anniversary of Dungeon Master release. And it’s packed with new features! Summary:

New exoskeleton rig.
3 new circuits & 9 modules.
Level cap increased from 16 to 17.
Enemy Showcase added.

Read the full article on our blog: https://goo.gl/1hHHhS
 

hackncrazy

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
415
Has any of you Grimrock lovers tried Vaporum yet?

I just discovered about it and saw that is 20% off at GOG, so I'm thinking on getting it.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Has any of you Grimrock lovers tried Vaporum yet?

I just discovered about it and saw that is 20% off at GOG, so I'm thinking on getting it.

I have.

If we look at the sub-genre of "real-time grid-based dungeon crawlers" and follow it from Dungeon Master (1987) to Eye of the Beholder (1990) to Lands of Lore (1993) to Stonekeep (1995) to Anvil of Dawn (1996) (AoD is put there to mark the end of the genre) to nothing at all until Legend of Grimrock (2012) and its sequel Legend of Grimrock 2 (2014), I'll say this: It's the best game in the genre to be released since Legend of Grimrock 2. But even when compared to both pre-nothing at all- and post -titles, it falls flat. The most recent update helps (adds a fourth class) but it's still not enough.

As RichardSimmons says: If you have that itch and it needs to be scratched, then Vaporum will do you right. Otherwise, check the Vaporum thread here on the Codex.
 

hackncrazy

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
415
Thank you guys for the help...I'll pass it then. Since Grimrock is the only real time crawler I've played, I think I have to go back to Dungeon Master, Eotb and such.
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
hackncrazy There's also Fall of the Dungeon Guardians, which from what I gather is basically Grimrock only focused more on combat instead of puzzles. (The combat is RTwP - apparently reminds people of MMO combat somewhat)
 

Jarpie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
6,603
Codex 2012 MCA
First Grimrock feels very similar to Dungeon Master, it clearly started as a remake of it. DM is still somewhat superior, I liked the class and spell-system more in it, and the dungeon felt more "devilish" in the design.
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
Patron
Joined
Dec 5, 2002
Messages
18,300
Location
Jersey for now
I just got Vaporum the other day and finally sat down to play it. Gotta say, so far I'm enjoying things.
The environment works quite well, and the atmosphere really brings you in.
Enemy design, letters, and the little audio logs really help to add to the environment. I just started level 3 Haunted.

Right now, the game is good. Despite this, I'd love a little bit more at the beginning. Still, choosing an exo rig is an interesting alternative to Character creation.
I'm using the Assault Rig as my first rig, loving it. The damage output definitely makes me conserve my healing.
Still, I'd love to see more ideas and possibilities as options for this whole thing. Hat off to the devs for making this game.
 

hackncrazy

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
415
I ended up buying Vaporum on impulse and I'm really disappointed. I feel almost as if the devs created the engine to simulate a combat driven game, and not an exploration one. I played until level 5 and AT LEAST 15 times I got into a room and it was instantly trapped inside with 5 enemies magically spawning inside. I gave up on the game when I realized I was not having fun because I wanted to explore the levels and the game simply didn't let me to. To make matters worse, the enemies were huge damage sponges, which made some battles go on for almost two minutes.

Also, at this point I've seen almost no puzzles and the ones that appeared were trivial, to say the least.

It's been a long time since I refunded a game, but Vaporum certainly fits the bill.
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
Patron
Joined
Dec 5, 2002
Messages
18,300
Location
Jersey for now
I'm not sure about that. I'm not interested in refunding it to be honest.
I understand about the lack of exploration. But really, I kind of expected that with the overall feel. This isn't Legend of Grimrock 2, which was awesome in that. But there is tremendous atmosphere within the world.
I treat it as a rogue-like in early stages with a lighter feel on things. Combat is good, requires strategy and thinking. For instance, the shotgun troopers I don't try to outrun or anything. Rather, I use a melee and shield and just keep closing in trying to beat them to death. Use Umbrella and Melee Servos to increase melee speed. With the big hammer guy, I'll back up and use a pistol and shield, trying to keep distance until I back into a corner. Then I switch to a 2-handed hammer and just bash away and activate servos.
I've got my blunt to rank 3. Will advance my health further. Then when those 2 health stats are up to an acceptable level, I'll upgrade energy stuff.
 

hackncrazy

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
415
Combat is good, requires strategy and thinking. For instance, the shotgun troopers I don't try to outrun or anything. Rather, I use a melee and shield and just keep closing in trying to beat them to death. Use Umbrella and Melee Servos to increase melee speed. With the big hammer guy, I'll back up and use a pistol and shield, trying to keep distance until I back into a corner. Then I switch to a 2-handed hammer and just bash away and activate servos.
I've got my blunt to rank 3. Will advance my health further. Then when those 2 health stats are up to an acceptable level, I'll upgrade energy stuff.


I partially agree with this.

Yes, the combat requires strategy and thinking...but all of this goes down the drain the moment that you are trapped in a 3x3 room with three enemies (not to mention that more often than not, said enemies has AOE attacks and or acid and stuff). At this point, you simply enter a DPS race praying to be alive at the end of it, so you can start dancing around the remaining enemy.

God knows I was never a fan of turn based combat, but at some point I wished Vaporum was turn based. Graphically speaking the game is beautiful and I think it is a one of a kind in terms of ambientation. Sadly, the combat got it the way of everything and took out all of the fun for me.
 

MortalMan

Barely Literate
Joined
Dec 15, 2017
Messages
3
Has any of you Grimrock lovers tried Vaporum yet?

I just discovered about it and saw that is 20% off at GOG, so I'm thinking on getting it.

Yes, I finished the game 2x already - first time on normal and with the thauma rig, and 2nd time recently with the new rig, that was added in the latest patch. :) Imo, the puzzles are on the easier side (compared to second Grimrock game), but overall it was fun game. And then, if you have problems with real-time combat, there is also this "stop time" mode. But it makes combat and timed puzzles easier.

And yes, the boss is HP sponge, but... that is the only major gripe I have with that game.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
The first levels are really light in terms of puzzles / exploration. The later half of the game has more complex / interesting ones. If you recall Dungeon Master, up to level 5 it was also very very light in terms of puzzles complexity or exploration.

Anyways, it is true that the game abuses the "trapped into a room where enemies magically spawn" all the time until the end.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom