Vaporum: Lockdown

Vaporum: Lockdown creates a nice sense of isolation and is a fun experience, despite some frustrating puzzles along the way. The presentation is solid and the progression elements are rewarding, even if the combat itself can be slightly repetitive after a time. Vaporum: Lockdown made a great initial impression on me, though by the time I got into the title’s later content, I was less enamored with it overall.

The term “grid-based” often brings up feelings of top-down RPGs or turn-based RTS titles. The ridged movement of these genres offer a somewhat tactical style of gameplay as your team moves between each tile on the map. Heading further back into gaming history, the grid style was fairly common in older PC titles – mainly games they allowed you to play is School. These educational games would often see you traversing a dungeon within a first-person viewpoint whilst solving reading puzzles or the dreaded mathematical questions. Vaporum: Lockdown is one of these games.

Vaporum: Lockdown should satisfy those looking for a first-person dungeon crawler with a unique aesthetic – but only if you can get past its shortcomings.

Overall this game offered a fun little story that expanded and continues on from its predecessor ‘Vaporum‘. The dark environment of the game works well with where the random enemies sprout from. The only thing that really bothered me with this game, is that there were random holes in the wall or pitfalls with spikes at the bottom that really didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the game. An easy fix for this would have been instead of spikes, putting unused electricity or overused batteries that spark and electrocute.

As a grid-based, first-person, action/adventure RPG, Vaporum: Lockdown offers plenty of gameplay elements to keep you busy. The dungeon-crawling game play is straightforward and not overly complicated, despite a good number of puzzles sprinkled in. In short, this is a solid prequel to the original Vaporum. Have fun exploring.

The game is really good and makes a good name for its predecessor. Vaporum: Lockdown offers a good story in a nice graphic design. However, the large number of items and equipment combined with the solution of various puzzles will also impress, which will torment the cerebral threads. At certain stages, however, the piecemeal movement with the controls is a bit chaotic and can end in death with hasty keystrokes.

I enjoyed the tone of Vaporum Lockdown. The story was fantastic and it’s been a good while since I was this immersed into a dungeon crawler. I think the lack of replay value does somewhat hurt it a little and the presentation could stand to be improved a little bit but I wholeheartedly recommend Vaporum Lockdown to anyone remotely curious in a more narrative-focused dungeon crawler.

Vaporum: Lockdown provides a fresh new take on tile based dungeon crawlers of old. The steampunk setting, as well as deep progression, enhance the already fluid combat to create a unique game that demands multiple playthroughs. While it can have moments of frustration, there’s some great fun to be had here. RPG fans may want to look into the game if they’re looking for something different, but nostalgic.

Vaporum: Lockdown offers us a new story, but told without frills, through texts, audios and some dialogue. It is not worth it, in any case, to acquire the game just for its history. Nor does it offer hardly any news and its humble origin is noticeable. The developer has gone to ensure that it has already been very continuous. Which is not necessarily bad. If we liked the first installment, this one will too, as long as we don't expect any revolution but more of the same with the same invoice.

The gameplay doesn’t change much from the earlier game in the series.