Vaporum is a grid-based, single-player & single-character dungeon crawler RPG seen from the first person perspective in an original steampunk setting. Inspired by old-school games like Dungeon Master I and II, the Eye of the Beholder series, and the most recent Legend of Grimrock I and II. Stranded in the middle of an ocean, in front of a gigantic tower, the hero has to find out what the place is, what happened there, and most importantly, who he is. Combat takes place in real time. Each enemy has a distinctive set of strengths and weaknesses so you have to employ different tactics to beat each one. Weapon types have each a set of unique bonuses and behaviors which adds more depth and thought when choosing what weapons to equip.

You will find many types of gadgets: direct attacks, area attacks, offensive & defensive buffs... These gadgets are powerful, but some enemies are immune to certain types of attacks, so you will have to figure out the best way to deal with every encounter the game throws at you. Solve intriguing puzzles and level-wide objectives where you have to use both your wits and reflexes. While most puzzles and riddles are contained in a single room, progression objectives can span an entire level or even multiple levels. Instead of increasing the abilities of your human character, you will improve an exoskeleton rig you wear. The game combines a "you are what you wear" aspect with a long-term development of your exo-rig. The gadget-based system allows you change your loadout of gadgets at any time, giving you a great deal of flexibility to deal with various situations. On the other hand, as you progress, you get to unlock useful circuits on your exo-rig, gaining significant permanent attribute bonuses and passive skills. Stranded on a small islet in the middle of an ocean, you enter a gigantic mechanical tower. Nothing makes sense to you, but it is all strangely familiar...

If you want to get into the backstory and uncover the mysteries of the tower, you can delve right into it by reading all the notes you can find. Don't worry, though, you can safely ignore all the text. All major story points are narrated by the main characters and they are fully voiced!

There are many optional areas in the game that you can choose to explore. They usually present some form of additional challenge, but come with a reward too! The tower is riddled with secret passages that contain unique items and notes of its inhabitants, giving you an insight into their lives and events that precede your arrival.

Update #14 (19 February 2019)

Hey, guys!

Patch time! A big one this time!

We've been silent for a long time now because we've been hard at work on porting Vaporum to Xbox One, PS4, and Switch. As that work is mostly done, we were able to put our attention back to the desktop version again.

Apart from smaller bugfixes that we found ourselves or that you guys reported to us, there is a whole host of optimizations and improvements going in with this patch.

For the game to work on the consoles at our expected standards, we had to dive deep under the hood and optimize lots of stuff. While some of these changes are specific to specific console targets, most are universal and will bring performance benefits to desktop targets as well. As a result, the game should perform better on any hardware, on any OS, and takes about 40% less space on your disk.

As always, we've been listening to all the feedback on our forums, and so we added new game options you guys asked for, and fixed issues you reported to us.

Here's the full list of changes:

• Added an option to toggle head bobbing while moving. Motion sickness no more!
• Added an option to toggle Stop Time Mode sounds.
• Added options to toggle audiovisual indicators when you're low on health.
• Added an option to set the type of your controller. This should fix, hopefully, all issues with controllers. If your controller doesn't work the way you'd expect, this setting will force the game to make the controller behave. :)
• Improved the performance when reapplying the same skill to the player over and over (acid pool and such effects).
• Improved the performance of the auto-map and the GUI overall.
• Improved the performance of animations, some visual effects, and post-processes.
• Improved culling to increase performance.
• Improved overall rendering performance.
• Reduced the disk space the game takes by about 40%.
• Fixed: Tooltips hide when you move items between containers and your inventory.
• Fixed the cursor misbehavior when the supersampling setting is not set to 1.0.
• Fixed a few issues in localization.
• Fixed: The button after the flame turret in L05 (The Riddle of Steel) can sometimes get you stuck, closing the door behind you, with no way to open the door again.
• Fixed: Some controllers may crash the game.
• Fixed: When you move into a hole in the Stop Time Mode, you don't fall. :D
• Fixed: Some "bloody" effects still show up when the Gore setting is set to off.
• Fixed: Shock Spider's light shines through walls.

Enjoy! :)

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Patch 12 (31st August 2018)

• Added controller support.
• Fixed: When you quit to the main menu while the automap is out of order, it will remain so even when you start a new game.
• Fixed: The unique sword Lithe Blade's burning effect (DOT) does not deal damage to other nearby enemies.
• Fixed: Return damage from some shields and the Heavy Rig resets the behavior of an enemy affected by the Manipulator gadget. This is inconvenient, as sometimes the enemy resets right after you use the Manipulator on it.
• Fixed: Some specific values of FOV (graphical setting) can cause visual glitches when being pulled by a Magnet Golem.

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Patch 11 (01st August 2018)

• Added Mac support.
• Added a few game tips to clarify some mechanics & interactions. This is also due to the upcoming controller support.
• Added a "Toggle HUD" button (default: F4). You can use this to make HUD-less screenshots.
• Fixed issues in Slovak, Japanese, and Chinese localization.
• Fixed: While you're in the process of dying and a game tip shows up, the game crashes.
• Fixed item container size.
• Fixed tooltips for Fumium Capacitor, Combat Fuse, Tech Fuse, Toughness Fuse, and - - Cicruit Upgrade.
• Fixed other minor bugs.

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Patch 10 (13 June 2018)

Hey guys!

Another small patch that fixes a major issue with the free camera look on Linux and some other minor issues on both platforms.

Have fun! :)

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Patch 9 (30 May 2018)

Hey guys!

We had to roll back the controller support, as we found issues with it in the current form. We will put it back into the game when it's 100% done. We're sorry for the confusion!

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Patch 8 (28 May 2018)

Hey guys! Just a miniscule patch, fixing a few minor issues and a rare crash we bumped into.

Happy gaming!

EDIT: By accident, this patch also includes official controller support, which we planned to add in a future patch. We did not intend to release it now, as it's not quite finished and 100% bug-free yet, but we'll let it fly. So, enjoy that too! We will update it in the future for sure.

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Patch 7 (01 March 2018) Linux only

• Fixed: On some combinations of OS and HW, reading string data is incorrect, resulting in super-long cooldowns of weapons, for instance, making the game unplayable.
• Fixed: News messages don’t show up in the main menu when subtitles are turned off in the game options.

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Patch 6 (26 February 2018)

• Linux build!
• Added Hungarian language, thanks to Zsolt Brechler!
• All consumable items can now stack. This was inconsistent where some did stack (e. g. - Repair Kits) and some did not (e. g. Fumium Cells).
• Fixed: Reinfusor & Overcharger modules have buggy interactions. You can activate gadgets for free, basically.
• Fixed: In some rare conditions, the game can crash when unable to load & parse the - EnemyShowcase.dat file.
• Fixed a few typos in game tips.
• Fixed: Item comparison tooltip option does not save correctly.
• Fixed: Some shaders and materials do not work correctly on Linux.

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Patch 5 (19 December 2017)

• New exoskeleton rig.
• 3 new circuits & 9 modules.
• Level cap increased from 16 to 17.
• Enemy Showcase added.

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Patch 4 (6 December 2017)

• Added a Stop Time Mode.
• Added an on-screen directional keypad.
• Added item comparison tooltips.

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Patch 3 (21 November 2017)

• Added a direction damage indicator so you can see where the damage is coming from.
• Increased the max FOV to 150. Note that values above 135 will likely cause visual glitches (this also depends on the screen ratio).
• Fixed missing names for some keyboard keys.

NOTE: Please make sure your controls work after the patch, as some of the hotkeys might get unassigned. You just need to reassign them once more.

• Other small fixes.

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Patch 2 (03 November 2017)

We know it took a lot more time than it should have, for which we are sorry, but it’s finally here! In today’s patch (Patch #2), we bring you 9 new languages: Chinese (simplified), Czech, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish.

Apart from these official languages, we also bring you the ability to write your own localization! Go to Vaporum/Localization and read the ReadMe.txt for info on how to start. We appreciate any feedback on the localization so if you find a typo, incorrect wording, or anything, feel free to tell us, and we will fix it for the next patch.

Along with the languages, we also updated the game. Here are the patch notes:

• Added 9 official languages: Slovak, Czech, Russian, Polish, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese (simplified).
• Added the ability to write community localizations. Head to the Localization folder and read the help file for more info.
• Improved organic hit sounds to sound more meaty and impactful.
• Added difficulty change prompt when you die a lot in a short time.
• Tweaked: Emergency Braces module will now also activate when you’re below the threshold when it comes off cooldown. Previously, this only activated when taking damage.
• Tweaked: Drainer gadgets now heal you for a portion of your max integrity, with a hard cap, instead of flat heal. Previously, you could abuse the system to get a lot more healing. Check this post for more info. Thanks motorbit!
• Fixed: In some cases, the automap may remain disabled even after returning from the teleport chambers in the Arx Vaporum level.
• Fixed: In rare cases, in the last room of Creepy Little Things, when you teleport back, the door remains closed and you cannot go back.
• Fixed: The chest with coal on platform in Boiling Point sometimes glitches, falling down.
• Lots of other small fixes. Thank you!

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Patch 1 Hotfix (10 October 2017)

• Fixed a bug introduced in Patch 1. The game should now run well again.

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Patch 1 (09 October 2017)

Difficulty changes:

• Final boss health: -15%
• Acid Roach:
• Health: -18%
• Acid pool damage: -16%
• All roaches can now drop Repair Kits. This was disabled, for some obscure reason.
• Decreased the difficulty of some of the hardest encounters in the Haunted (L03) and Librarian (L04) levels.
• Note: For this to take effect, you have to load an autosave or quicksave in the previous level (so end of L02) and then continue to L03, or to just start a new game.

Added new options:

• Invert mouselook: You can now invert the up-down mouselook.
• Mouselook sensitivity.
• Toggle idle camera animation: When you remain still for a while, the camera starts looking around. You can toggle this now.
• Field of view slider.
• Phonodiary auto-play: You can toggle whether you want phonodiaries to automatically play or not.
• Aspect ratio filter added for 21:9 (2.33:1). Set the filter to “All” if you don’t see your resolution listed in the list.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a dead-end in the Office level (thanks TurnSpender!).
• Fixed: Hardware cursor flickers while mouselooking.
• Fixed: Restoring HP and EP is not 100% correct in rare cases.
• Squashed a few other nasty bugs. (No roaches were harmed! That’s up to you guys!)