You can’t get more old-school RPG than this experience, so Vaporum: Lockdown certainly delivers on that front, but it almost feels a little too “safe”: there are no major mechanical changes from the original Vaporum to speak of, and there isn’t too much to differentiate it from other games in the genre from that mechanical standpoint.

That meat is combined with the potatoes of classic RPG elements: loot everything you see for valuables, read every note, listen to every recording, murder everything in sight for more valuables, uncover secrets that would drive Lovecraft nuts… and then perish in an untimely manner to an unseen trap. Just like the original, the gameplay involves first-person real-time combat where you move through tiles one by one to a soundless beat combat can be a slow dance, where you try to time your moves accordingly to dodge attacks or block an enemy’s retreat, or it can be a frantic mess as you get surrounded and mauled before you can react. In fact, it’s identical to that original title in many regards, seemingly adopting the “if it ain’t broke” philosophy this time, however, you assume the role of a named, fully-voiced protagonist who must explore the titular Arx Vaporum and discover exactly what’s going on. The game is set as a prequel to the original Vaporum that Fatbot Games released back in 2017. Vaporum: Lockdown represents a well-made effort to do exactly that, though I can’t help but lament how “safe” the game turns out to be. Although it may be something of videogames’ past, it’s still good to see developers trying to keep older designs alive. It’s not too often that I see or even play games like Vaporum: Lockdown, an old-school grid-based dungeon crawler in the spirit of Eye of the Beholder or Legend of Grimrock where one proceeds step-by-step through dank dungeons fraught with traps and monsters alike.

Vaporum lockdown