Torchlight II Announced For 2011

Runic Games has announced a sequel to the popular action RPG Torchlight, planned for release in Spring 2011. One notable improvement from the first game is Torchlight II's inclusion of online co-op play, with LAN support and a matchmaking system. "The sequel will feature an updated version of the Torchlight editor, randomized overworld areas complete with weather effects, random dungeons, a selection of pets, fishing, limitless loot, and a retirement system which will allow users to retire an older character and bestow some benefits of it to a newly created character." An MMO set in the Torchlight world is still in development.

Comments

Built with Ogre3D

[johnhp]

Torchlight was built using Ogre3D, an open source graphics rendering engine. I hope that the sequel uses it too.

Ogre3D is written in C++ and is compatible with PC, Linux, Mac, iPhone, Android and other platforms. If you're into programming 3D games or simulations, you should definitely check it out. www.ogre3d.org

(I'm a long time user of Ogre3D but otherwise unaffiliated)

Re:Built with Ogre3D

[xororand]

It worked for 2D Boy's World of Goo.

Quotes:
"It’s only been 2 days since the release of the Linux version and it already accounts for 4.6% of the full downloads from our website."
"More copies of the game were sold via our website on the day the Linux version released than any other day. This day beat the previous record by 40%. There is a market for Linux games after all :)"

A welcome trend.

[PhasmatisApparatus]

At a time when there seems to be more defunct than active game companies, and huge gaming monstrosities such as Activision and EA are merging/acquiring left and right, it's a welcome change to see new developers like Runic spring up overnight.

Re:A welcome trend.

[Anonymous Coward]

Runic is comprised primarily of developers previously from Flagship Studios (Hellgate London) previously from Blizzard North (Diablo 1 & 2). So they're not exactly 'newcomers', despite the age of the studio itself.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/08/05/0422232/Torchlight-II-Announced-For-2011#

Timing

[TheJokeExplainer]

Runic really *really* needs to be able to release this way before Diablo III comes out.

Torchlight 1 was excellent for scratching the Diablo itch except that it painfully lacked multiplayer/coop -> that was what made the Diablo series really really fun and was very sorely missed. All in all that was my only Torchlight gripe, and was why I stopped playing it after a while. Collecting randomized bling ain't as fun if you can't show 'em off and trade 'em with others.

If this comes out at roughly the same time as Diablo III, it'll not only be a problem of gaining wallets+mindshare, but also the big one of timeshare.

People playing other games means less time playing your game, and with multi-player games, critical mass of players is very very important. It's really frustrating at how there aren't enough players to play with who have decent pings if you're in Asia, like with Streetfighter IV on PC and Borderlands.

If there aren't enough players online to play with, it'll make the game a little less attractive.

Anyway, Runic did a good job with Torchlight. The modest system requirements were a big plus too as it allowed you to run it on netbooks with less horsepower. Hope they're able to push the sequel out the window in time to avoid being slaughtered by Diablo III.

Re:What about Fate?

[PotatoFarmer]

I played the Torchlight demo and I could not stop thinking how much more similar it was to Fate than to Diablo.

There's a good reason for that. Travis Baldree, the lead developer of Torchlight, also designed Fate.