Vaporum

I went into Vaporum expecting a competent Grimrock clone with a coat of copper paint. What I found instead was a genuinely moody, handcrafted tower that kept pulling me forward one tile at a time, not because the mechanics demanded it, but because the atmosphere made leaving feel wrong. Fatbot Games is a small Bratislava studio, and the care they put into every floor of the Arx Vaporum is visible in a way that most studios three times their size rarely manage. The structure is old-school at its bones: first-person, grid-locked movement through a mechanical tower full of traps, locked doors, and things that want to hurt you. But Vaporum layers something quieter on top of that skeleton. Instead of a party, you control a single character who straps into an exo-rig shortly after arrival. Your chosen rig functions roughly like a class, with options covering the armored brawler, the gadget-wielding tech specialist, and the faster, more evasive build in between. The real progression, though, comes from two directions at once: a "you are what you wear" inventory layer where swapping weapons and armor shifts your moment-to-moment style, and a circuit tree that burns enemy-harvested fumium into permanent passive upgrades. Weapon types matter in a satisfying way too, with mechanical enemies leaning weaker to blunt damage while organic ones fold faster to slashing. None of this is complicated, but it is considered, and it respects your time. The optional pause-time combat mode, where the world freezes until you act, deserves special mention. It transforms what could be a twitchy real-time scrap into something closer to quiet chess, and toggling between modes on the fly is one of the genuinely smart ideas the game offers. Story is delivered through written journals and fully voiced audio logs scattered across the tower's floors. It borrows the DNA of System Shock and its successors, a fragmented picture of something going badly wrong, assembled by the player as they explore. The amnesiac protagonist narrates his own growing understanding, and the voice work is solid enough to carry the weight. The mystery held me. Whether it surprises you will depend on your appetite for this kind of environmental storytelling, but Vaporum treats it as a real priority rather than an afterthought, which is more than most genre entries bother with. The soundscape does its job of sustaining tension through grinding machinery and industrial ambience, though the music itself is sparse enough that some players have flagged it as a weakness. I found the near-silence appropriate. A tower full of things gone wrong should feel oppressive, not scored. Fair criticisms exist, and I won't paper over them. The rig choice at the start feels more meaningful than it actually is: a second playthrough reveals that builds converge toward similar playstyles regardless of your initial selection. Puzzle variety eventually plateaus into a familiar rotation of pressure plates, thrown objects, and lever sequences. Some floors blur together visually, the industrial palette doing its atmospheric work at the cost of landmark variety. And the secret passages, while rewarding to find, are hidden aggressively enough that missing them feels less like a skill gap and more like a coin flip. None of these are dealbreakers for the right player, but newcomers to the genre expecting CRPG-level build divergence or puzzles with strong visual logic will find friction. What Vaporum ultimately offers is around 12 to 15 hours of handcrafted, hand-placed loot and enemies in a setting that genuinely commits to its own world. It is a game that knows its lane and drives it with intent. If you have already worked through both Legend of Grimrock entries and want that same deliberate pace wrapped in steampunk iron and dread, this is the next stop.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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