Torchlight: When Fewer Features Means Better Gaming
Torchlight is a recent PC game available digitally for <$20 by Runic Games. The developers decided to match the low price with a relatively sparse feature set. Most games based around classes have more options for types of classes (or at least more subsets for those types) and many more spells/skills to learn. While it may sound like you are getting what you pay for, it is precisely the limited number of classes and skills that seems to make this game so well balanced.
As Jeff Atwood pointed out two years before the release of Torchlight (and in regard to non-gaming software), software should not be measured as a bundle of features. While Dragon Age (another game based around character classes) easily has a greater number of features, it does not make it a better game, per se. It would be unfair to compare the two games as they were developed by two teams of differing sizes and are built to entertain is different ways. However, the smaller feature set allowed the smaller development team to create an incredibly well balanced loot driven game in Torchlight.
While adding more classes and skills would allow more flexibility, and possibly more replayability, who wants to replay an unbalanced loot game? In addition to providing a reasonably scoped feature set to provide a more focused experience, the developers of Torchlight followed another great traditional software (and gaming) convention: Let the users determine what is broken. While Torchlight was initially a solid experience, a few of the mechanics were ripe for breaking the game. Specifically, enchanting weapons and heirlooming gems multiple times made some items game breaking.
Instead of holding the game for months to find these subtle problems, Runic released a game that was fully functional with a few exploits (that they likely were unaware of). When users found these exploits, Runic was quick to patch a solution. Version 1 may have ‘sucked’, but they shipped it anyway. When problems were found, they responded.
While Torchlight may not be the biggest selling, or most epic game of this holiday season, it succeeds in being great software with great support.
