Vaporum: Lockdown Review for Nintendo Switch

Vaporum: Lockdown, created by Fatbot Games and launched late 2020, has finally come to the Nintendo Switch in March of 2021. The game follows a scientist traversing a dangerous tower stuffed with steampunk-themed puzzles and dangers. The game is filled to the brim with lore-rich voice diaries, going the extra mile to establish itself as a true steampunk story game. But what I certainly didn’t expect was to discover a game with 3D grid-based real-time RPG battle added to the mix.

Vaporum: Lockdown is a prequel to Fatbot Games’ Vaporum title. Having never played the original, Vaporum: Lockdown was my first introduction to the series and lore, but I was immediately interested. Steampunk genre games are still few and far between, with one of its most notable IP’s, Bioshock, fading into gaming history. When a new game sports the aesthetic, every fan of steampunk is ready to jump in.

Fatbot Games’ seem to know their audience. Aesthetics like steampunk are born from a respect for world-building. The introduction cinematic does well at both introducing the main character’s motivations and establishing a setting ready to be explored. We learn of Lisa Teller’s respect for her father and how her father’s relationship with her was affected by the twisted culture established by the Supreme Bureau. Inside the dungeons of the tower, the player is often given little notes they can read that give even more insight to the inhabitants of Vaporums’ world and that world’s history. As you encounter more enemies, you get access to encyclopedia entries that explain the existence of a steam powered spider automaton or a cyborg giant rat. The details are there, ready to be explored.

But even more than the story, what happened to catch my attention was the unique combat system. You don’t often see 3D grid-based real-time RPG combat (and it’s not just because there’s too many keywords to fit on the synopsis page). Lockdown has the player in first person perspective, moving only one tile at a time. There were times when this system thrived while I solved puzzles, slowly piecing together information and tools to discover the solution. I had time to deal with the stiff movements. But given this sort of movement and the introduction, I expected the game to be more story-based than any kind of combat. Just a few minutes into the game, I realized combat was one of the main gameplay loops to be found. I was irked to say the least. Turning moves the player a full 90 degrees. Any given battle would just look like the player stepping one tile forward to attack, trying to step aside in time to dodge the enemy’s attack, and then popping back out to swing your weapon again.

The navigation, coupled with this means of combat, made for an incredibly stiff battle system. While it is definitely a unique take as far as design goes, I think there are too many conflicting ideas involved. Steampunk thrives when you get to explore the world-building, but the movement and combat system seem to directly contradict that. In Vaporum, the player and enemies are constricted to tight corridors. When you might like to observe and immerse yourself, the game enforces a more than linear perspective. Other tile movement games do not suffer from this same weakness due to being in overhead third person. Third person allows the player to take in the entire environment from up above while also allowing for overhead movement mechanics like dashes to avoid the enemy. Being in first person, I often found myself barely able to navigate the environment during a fight. It was far too easy to get trapped in corners as I tried to stiffly move my character’s perspective 90 degrees at a time, feeling far more lag between movements than I’d feel in the original Pokemon games which don’t even have real-time combat (end of breath).

The parts that Vaporum: Lockdown does well, it does excellently. The puzzles and stories made me interested and left me feeling smart as I solved them. But the choice to employ such a strange movement and combat system left me feeling disappointed. Fighting easily became my least favorite part of the game, but there was little avoiding it.