Can there really be too much of a good thing? A little bit more over a year after its launch in early access, Halls of Torment, a survivor-like largely inspired by old school RPGs (roleplaying games), has reached two important milestones: more than a million players have ventured in the famed and dangerous halls, each filled to the brim with monsters and dangers, and the game will get its 1.0 version in a few weeks.
Get in, kill the monsters, try to get out after triumphing over the big, bad villain, usually after having collected weapons, skills and other magic spells. The game, developed by the german studio Chasing Carrots, will be familiar to the fans of a certain Vampire Survivors, a title that launched a sub-genre almost by itself.
« Obviously, Vampire Survivors was the biggest influence on Halls of Torment« , acknowledges the team in an interview conducted by email.
« But the first game that made us actually consider making a game in that genre was 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Other than that, there were plenty of visual inspirations from older 90’s era RPGs, like Arcanum, Nox, the original Fallout, or Planescape: Torment. »
Even if the developers don’t specifically mention it, there is also a striking resemblance with another 90’s title: Diablo, the hack’n’slash developed by Blizzard.
But using nostalgia alone will not cut it: unless your progression system is good, the players will tire quickly and switch to another one of the dozens of similar titles. In this case, Chasing Carrots went with something a little more modern: « Content-wise, we’ve had a look at modern ARPGs (action roleplaying games) like Path of Exile, since in part we wanted to provide a small-scale pocket version of what those kinds of games offer », they add.
Being able to reach that middle ground between pure action and character progression – there is about a dozen classes available in the game, right now, each with his own main weapon, statistics and special habilities – was indeed one of the main objectives of Halls of Torment‘s creators.
As was using players’ feedback to transform the game and broaden its appeal: « It’s very important. We have to keep an eye on players’ expectations and experiences constantly. In the end, we’re making the game for them and reading their comments on what they like and what gripes they have is the primary source of information for us when it comes to decision making during development. »
« Additionally, we are a very small team, and as such we don’t have a very elaborate QA process. We do a lot of internal testing, some of it is even automated. But inevitably bugs will slip through. In those cases players reporting issues are a treasure trove for us », adds the team.
Unexpected success
Even if Chasing Carrots already had a few games under their belt before creating Halls of Torment, the success of this latest title took the team by surprise, it seems.
« We did not expect Halls of Torment to take off like it did. We’ve set rather modest goals for ourselves. We wanted to make smaller games with a higher release frequency to minimize financial risk », says the developer, again via email.
« Our previous game, Good Company, took five years to make. It sold relatively well, but not enough to cover the expenses of a five-year development. So we shifted gears and reduced our scope drastically. Our hope was that Halls of Torment would pay for its development and allow us to keep the lights on for a little longer, so we could make a couple more of these smaller games. When Halls of Torment exceeded our expectations, we decided it would be a good idea to invest more time into it and put more content on the table.«
What’s in store for adventurers?
And so, what will we find, in this 1.0 version, coming out on September 24th? The team talks about a sizable update, inclute the « Vault », the sixth and last stage for the game, with a different time mechanic than elsewhere in the game.
In their announcement, they also mention new challenges, more character progression, new monsters and weapons, the possibility of retrieving « uncommon variants » of items (armor, weapons, magical items) – something that is not possible, for the moment –, more game modes… The update seems to be substantial, and for the newcomers or the experience dungeon dweller, it seems like a good time to (re)discover the game.
And, for the time being, that will be it for Halls of Torment, says the team. If there are indeed « rough ideas floating around » about future content, and possibly an expansion, according to the developer, « nothing is concrete ».
« We’re focusing on the release of 1.0 for now and we’ll have a more in depth chat about future content after that », writes the team, before saying that « whenever we talk about 1.0, our understanding is that it is a feature-complete and polished game. This means that no additional features or content are required for the player to have the intended well-rounded experience. 1.0 is what we would feel comfortable with to put in a physical release on a store shelf », even if there could be some ideas to « keep the game alive for a longer period of time ».
Is the clock ticking for Halls of Torment and other survivors-like? Even if their game has largely surpassed their expectations, the developers from Chasing Carrots seem to think that the « Golden Age » of the subgenre is (mostly) over.
« To us, it looks like the hype around the genre has ebbed away. We see the market for the genre being saturated for the time being. A lot of survivor-likes have been released during a relatively short period of time, and unless a game in that subgenre offers something new and interesting it’s going to have a hard time convincing players », they say.
In the meantime, there are always monsters to kill, precious artefacts to find, potions to create and achievements to unlock. Come on in, the Halls of Torment are waiting for you…
