Right on the heels of Motiga

Less than 24 hours after we received word that Gigantic developer Motiga was being shuttered by Perfect World, another Seattle-based studio suffers a similar fate. Runic Games, the developer behind the Torchlight series and the recently-released Hob, has also be closed.

Runic head Marsh Lefler announced the news on the front page of Runic's website, confirming that the company was coming to an end after a nine-year run. Parent company Perfec??t World sent us?? this statement, which addresses both Motiga and Runic:

Following the news that Motiga has reduced the staff of its studio, Perfect World Entertainment can confirm that as the publisher of Gigantic, the game will continue to be available on our platforms. A core team of developers remains at Motiga, who will work with us to support the game and its pl??ayers, including moving full steam ahead with the upcoming November update and future content. We cannot thank everyone enough for their contributions in making Gigantic ??the outstanding experience it is today.

Perfect World Entertainment recently closed the Seattle office of Runic Games as part of the company's continued strategy to focus on online games as a service. We're grateful to the team for all of their hard work bringing incredible experiences like Torchlight, Torchlight II and Hob to life. Runic Games will remain a part of Perfect World Entertainment's portfoli?o of studios, and its games will continue to be available to players, as we stay committed to supporting and growing Runic Games' beloved franchises.

The staff reduction at Motiga and the closure of Runic Games Seattle were un??related. Perfect World Entertainment stands committed to delivering the best massively multiplayer online gameplay experiences to our players.

We haven't seen the end of either Torchlight or Gigantic, but the people who created thos?e games largely won't be the ones who continue to support them. It has been a rough week for Perfect World-owned studios. Our best wishes go out to everyone who was affected by these layoffs.

Runic Games [Runic Games]

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It's coming later this year to PC and PS4

We haven't had much to say about Hob in recent months, but Runic's action-adventure game left a good impression back in 2015. Now, nearly two years later, it's really coming together.

I like how fluid the character movement is between the roll and the warp ability. This video is just a hint at the shape-shifting world and puzzle-solving. Assuming Runic has that all figured out, this'll be a cool one. Either way, I'm glad they pursued a game like this instead of jumping into another Torchlight.

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A new adventure from Runic Games

Zelda. Ico. Shadow of the Colossus. Even a little Metroid.

Runic Games has borrowed concepts from these iconic adventures for its next PC and console game, Hob. Why "Hob?" Well, the name has a dual meaning that refers to li??ttle sprite characters and machinery. But also: "I like one-word titles," CEO Max Schaefer told me. Agreed!

The story is told through a shape-shifting world, not thro?ugh text or voice-overs. There's light platforming and puzzle solving. You can slice gras??s to reveal hidden health pickups. Horrible monsters make an awfully gory mess of adorable wildlife despite the cartoon-y visuals.

While the individual elements of Hob sound familiar, it has a feel all its own.

My demo at PAX Prime was short, and left me with ques??tions that almost certainly won't be answered until I get to pl??ay the finished game, whenever that will be. It's still a ways off.

I was dropped into an early area of the game -- but not the actual opening, it's worth pointing out -- and started hopping up hills and climbing vines. Hob is presented from an overhead view, but its came??ra dynamically zooms in on focal points. It pays to check out every tucked-away area for health, stamina, and weapon upgrades, sure, but also to take in the sights.

Eventually, I happened upon some basic creatures and then a boss. My Souls instincts kicked in and I rolled, rolled, rolled. You can never be too cautious, y'know? The bigger foe was fairly easy but, in general, "The idea ??is that all of our monsters will basically destroy you unless you actually figure out how to beat them," according to Runic president Marsh Lefler.

??Moving on, I worked my way underground to an area like the one shown in this concept art, and used my arm to grapple around. The world is, in part, mechanical. It doesn't sit still. You might come back to a spot you've already gone through only to find that it has been altered.

Runic wouldn't give much away about the story, but teased something unexpe??cted. "What makes this game unique is what it hints at -- w?e have some pretty big ideas for it," said Lefler.

He also believes the team is "going to blow people's minds when we start show??ing them what we're going to be actually doing with ma?nipulating the world to the Nth degree."

While there will surely be a Torchlight III one day, I'm happy we're getting Hob first. It sounds l??ike the folks at Runic are genuinely happy to take a break from RPGs, too.

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Borderlands' art style meets Zelda?

Torchlight developer Runic Games has announced its newest project, Hob.

Hob is a vibrant, suspenseful adventure game. As players delve into the mysteries around them, they discover a planet in peril. Can it be mended, or will the world fall further into chaos?

Hob is presented without text or dialogue. Narrative is revealed as players explore and interact with their unfamiliar surroundings and the strange life forms that inhabit it. The third title from developer Runic Games, Hob is being developed for PC and console, featuring smooth controller gameplay, multi-layered puzzles, and striking visuals.

We don’t know much about Hob just yet, but judging by the screenshots (which you can find below), it appears to take more as more involved type of adventure than the point-and-click games the genre’s more commonly associated with. It’s definitely a departure from Runic’s usual type of game, as both FATE and the Torchlight games have been Diablo-style ARPGs.

It also looks really pretty. Not a fan of the Borderlands-style black outline on everything, but there’s enough colour and interesting landscapes there to keep me inte??rested. Add in the non-verbal storytelling it claims to have, and that makes me look forward to seeing what comes out of this.

There is currently no release date for Hob, no platforms… nor anything else really. All we know is that it’s a thing that now exists. I expect we’ll know more in ten days when PAX begins and that timer on the Hob website hits zero.

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Releasing Monday, February 2

You mean to tell me 2012's action-RPG Torchlight II isn't already available for Mac? Oh. I see. Well, props to Runic Games for not abandoning? the task, then. Maybe I'll play it on my next flight.

The Mac version of Torchlight II hits Steam on Monday. This solemn trailer says as much, but you'll still want to stick around for Falcor the Papillion. Be stil?l, my heart. I'm also fond of Runic's official announcement email for the release date, viewable below. *Spooky scary skeleton warning*

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Torchlight II was??, unfortunately, subject to a number o??f delays. Originally set for release back in 2011, it's only now become available for purchase. I'm happy to say the wait was worth it.

It's a bit rough around the edges, but Torchlight II takes the successful formula of the original Torchlight (and its predecessors) and expands on it, without making any drastic changes. If you played the first game, you know pretty much exactly what you're getting with the sequel -- and that's definitely not a bad thing.

Torchlight II may not be a perfect game -- the UI could use a bit of ext??ra polish and the multiplayer system begs for extra features -- but it's a ton of fun and at only $20, it's an absolute steal.

Torchlight II (PC)
Developer: Runic Games
Publisher: Perfect World
Release: September 20, 2012
MSRP: $19.99

It's been a few years since the end of the first Torchlight, and, surprise surprise, the world is in danger again. A corrupted Alchemist (likely the pla?yable character from the original game) has destroyed the town of Torchlight, stolen Ordrak's Heart, and it's up? to you to chase him around the world and stop him before he drains the energy out of the Elemental Guardians that keep balance in the world.

How will you save the world? You will click. On everything. You will click on a bunch of monsters, and you'll click on some chests and some urns, and you'll click on all the massive amount of loot that spews forth from everything you touch, and sometimes you'll even mis-click on a poorly placed UI element. You'll happily click away, you'll have a lot of fun doing it, and you'll suddenly look up and realize you've been clicking non-stop for three hours and you didn't realize how late it was and you really should go to bed but there's another dungeon you need to click your way through so maybe you'll just do one more quest and then you'll ?finally stop clicking and go to bed. Maybe.

Your primary method of slaughtering enemies will be with your class skills, and Torchlight II's skill system will be familiar to those who've played the original game, although it's gotten some minor tweaks. Each of the four playable classes still has three skill trees, with each tree containing seven active skills and three passives. At each level, you get five attribute points to place into one of the main attributes (stre??ngth, dexterity, focus, and vitality), and one skill point to place in one of you?r skill trees.

Unlike the original game, there are no skills shared among all the classes anymore -- each class has a unique set of 30 abilities. As long as you meet the level requirements for a skill (which naturally increase as you train a specific skill), you can put a point into it, r?egardless of how many previous points you have in skills that come before it or in the o??verall tree.

It's pretty straightforward, and on the whole each class's skills seem varied and, for the most part, useful. Even the early skills can hold their own as long as you keep investing points into them (my Embermage beat the game almost entirely usi??ng Prismatic Bolt, the first skill in his Storm tree).

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of room to experiment -- you can only refund the last three skill poin?ts you spent, and the cost to do so is rather high. One to three points in a skill is, I found, not enough to really get a feel for?? how the skill will perform at later levels. I often found myself hoarding points or just investing in passives -- I was hesitant to commit, out of a fear of having to restart my character because of bad skill choices.

Another new mechanic is the addition of the Charge bar -- a meter that fills when you're murdering things and decays when you're not, conferring class-dependent bonuses. Embermages receive 12 seconds of mana-free casting and a damage burst when their bar is filled, while Outlanders receive small boosts to a variety of stats depending on how full their bar is. Engineers get cha?rge "points" that make certain skills and abilities more powerful, and Berserkers get guaranteed critical hits for six seconds whenever their bar is maxed. It's an interesting mechanic that not only adds depth to each class, but also encourages you to move forward and keep murdering things.

You'll fight your way through four acts (really three acts and a short final dungeon), each with its own feel and theme. The locales are nicely detailed and feel varied, and I never found myself getting bored of an area before I was on to the next, even when full clearing the area. Full clearing is something you'll want to do -- missing a sidequest or a dungeon can quickly put you behind the leve?l curve, and you'll either have to go back and find what you missed or rerun previous area?s to catch up before you can progress.

The most notable new feature in the game is multiplayer -- something fans of the original game had been clamoring for. While the multiplayer system is primitive, consisting simply of a friends list, a list of games around your level range, and no chat lobby, it gets the job done, and as expected, Torchlight II is great to play with your friends. Any loot that drops in-game i??s unique to your character, so you don't have to worry about ninjalooters or fighting ??over the unique item that just dropped.

It's a good thing, too, since you'll see a lot of uniques drop. Loot is plentiful, and as your work your way through the game you'll be showered in upgrades, which follow the standard loot rarity rating of common - magic - rare - unique - legendary. Whereas Diablo III was criticized for the scarcity of powerful items and upgrades, Torchlight II almost suffers from the opposite issue, with un??iques dropping at a pace of roughly one every half-hour or so.

I hesitate to call it a "problem," especially since trading is tough/non-existent given the lack of a chat lobby in multiplayer, but I will admi?t to being a bit annoyed after getting three of the exact same unique helmets in the span of thirty minutes. I've yet to find a legendary though -- the most powerful, rarest items that only show up starting at level 50 -- so even though I ended my first playthrough with something like 35 uniqu?e items, there's still better, more exclusive loot to aim for.

And it's easy to want to aim for better loot after completing the game, since Torchlight II gives you a f?ew options to keep things fresh. There's a standard New Game+ mode, allowing you to begin again with everything starting at Level 50, and there's also the Mapworks, w??hich enables you to spend gold to purchase maps that allow you to enter various random dungeons, each with their own level range and special modifiers that mix things up.

These complaints are relatively minor, though, especially in light of the game as a whole. It's addictive, it's got character, and it's really, really cheap for the product you're getting. I can guarantee you'll notice some problems as you play through it, and you'll probably wish the UI had a bi?t more polish and that the multiplayer system was a bit more robust, but you'll find these issues don't detract much from the overall experience. When you consider that the mod tools are already available, and what we saw with the first ??game, it's likely many of these issues will be modded out somewhere down the line.

If you're a fan of hack 'n slashes, loot fests, or dungeon crawlers, definitely pick up Torchlight II. It's absolutel??y worth your time and money, and should hold your attention for quite a while. There are portions of the game that could certainly use a little bit of polish, but it's unlikely these problems will turn you off from the game entirely. Grab the game, grab some friends, and get to clicking.

Did I mention it's only $20?

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Looking forward to Torchlight II's release in a couple of days? How about the game's soundtrack, composed by Matt Uelmen of Diablo and Diablo II fame? Originally, the OST was released back in June in limited quantities, as Jayson Napolitano previously noted. The good news is that it's now available for the public and for the wonderful, wonderful price of NOTHING!

That's right! You can swing on by the Torchlight II soundtrack page and download the 28?-track album right this second. No muss, no fuss. It's a beautifu??l thing.

I love this recent trend of game composers' giving away their soundtracks. It's such a generous gesture that only gets you more excited to check the full game out. Who among you is going to capitalize on Mr.?? Uelmen's generosity?

The Torchlight II Soundtrack [Torchlight II]

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One last look at the action-RPG before launch

Confession: I never did finish the original Torchlight. For whatever reason, the game failed to grab me -- maybe it was the pacing, the lack of co-op support, or something else entirely. Whatever the case might be, I'll finish Torchlight II. It's come together nicely and feels like a true sequel, to ?the point where I had completely forgotten that Runic Games is only asking for $19.99 come September 20, 2012.

While getting some hands-on time at PAX, Runic president Travis Baldree recapped many of the changes and additions that went into Torchlight II, both big and small, from the reworked impact of animations to the varying amounts of splash damage associated with attacks. Long story short, the end result is a game which just feels right -- an absolute must for click-heavy titles like action-RPGs. This is not merely more Torchlight, it's better Torchlight.

What stood out to me the most was the combat. Not only did it seem more fluid, but the actual number of creatures -- which have some ridiculo?us, awesome designs -- seems to be noticeably up. I wouldn't say my Engineer was overwhelmed, but it came close a few times, seemingly right at the sweet spot between gameplay that is either unexciting or overly difficult.

What's happening after the September release? Runic will focus on getting the mod tools out in the coming weeks, and there's also the Mac port to look forward to. While not necessarily a huge deal, Baldree did mention that Steam Workshop will be supported as well. With Diablo III disappointing some players, there's been a lot of pressure placed on Torchlight II. The wait looks to have been worth it.

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Armed Heroes, a mobile MMORPG, is the latest game on iTunes to be caught shamelessly stealing stuff from other studios. The victim this time is Torchlight, with Runic Games' Travis Baldree calling out the thieving party -- EGLS Ltd -- on Twitter. 

Naturally, Runic has reported the game to Apple for a takedown, but Armed Heroes is currently still on the store. Of course, since the studio's shenanigans were ru?mbled, the ti??tle is getting slaughtered in the user reviews, with a plenty of one-star summaries warning potential customers to keep away. 

Armed Heroes did not just steal Torchlight in its entirety, but it did take a lot of assets, including many character models and sound files. It's a shame because, a??ll told, Armed Heroes is supposedly a pretty decent little game. Sad that it had to also be creatively bankrupt.

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