Vaporum

One of the older games still left on my list - from late 2017 - it's Vaporum.

I'm going to be upfront - I did not give this game a fair try. It's basically Legend of Grimrock, which came out 5 years earlier, but worse. And Legend of Grimrock itself is a throwback to old RPGs, which I haven't played, but can only assume couldn't afford proper collision detection or such due to the technology of the time, and thus defaulted to having all combat and movement be on a grid. The entire game is exploring this pre-built dungeon (meaning little-to-no replayability). There's traps, there's small puzzles, and there'a a bunch of enemies. The enemies, once close enough, take an action every some unit of time, either moving closer to you, or attacking you. Mind you, despite the game being set on a grid, and enemies acting almost as on fixed ticks, the game is actually action-based. You (or your party, if we're talking about Grimrock) are generally faster than everything else, allowing you to abuse the tick rate and outmanoeuver the enemies, dodging their attacks by timing, while getting your own in.
There are of course also the usual RPG elements, such as collecting consumables, new items and weapons, levelling up, different skills, etc.

Now, while I only played Vaporum for about an hour, I have closer to a dozen hours in Grimrock, which is why I felt confident in abandoning the game so soon. I just dislike almost everything unique about it. The combat and movement systems of times past, used again here, weren't like that by design, but by necessity, I'm quite sure. It feels terrible, and that's not only because I think combining turn-based and action gameplay is a bad idea. I would much rather go on a one-on-one whacking contest with each enemy than do the tedious dance of maybe having to do three movements in quick succession, not fucking any up, before I could land a hit on an enemy without retaliation. It makes the combat drag on so, but is necessary to not run out of health and resources.
Also the puzzles are kind of lame, and finding little hidden buttons on walls isn't enjoyable in my experience. Vaporum especially didn't give me the impression that the dungeon was designed very well, and the production quality of everything from graphics to voice acting was a bit below the bar I'd like.

All-in-all, definitely not a game for me. For the most part, gameplay of the past should be kept in the past, and mixing genres doesn't end well, and I don't think Vaproum is an exception. Combine that with the not-great overall quality, and I have no reason to recommend it. Perhaps if you really liked Grimrock and are looking for more games exactly like that, because I don't think there's many of them around.

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