Sometimes it seems like your friends list on Steam is completely taken over by a game, and right now PC gamers are enamored with a new, $20 take on the Diablo formula called Torchlight. This is a game with bright, attractive graphics, enough looting to satisfy fans of new equipment and weaponry, and... no multiplayer? Ars Technica caught up with Wonder Russell, the "Minister of Culture" for Runic Games, to explore what makes this game so special.

From the ashes...

The first question was a simple one: why ship a top-down loot fest such as Torchlight without multiplayer? The answer goes back to how Runic Games formed, and where the game is headed, along with an interesting culture at the developer that rewards playability. It starts with the closure of Flagship Studios, and the subsequent loss of all the IP that developer was working on. In the case of the team that would become Runic Games, they lost Mythos, a free-to-play MMO, right before it went into open beta.

"To lose a game you've worked on for years like that is heartbreaking, so first priority for us as a new team was simple: ship a game," Russell explained. The founders of the company had worked on both Diablo and Fate, so they knew this genre inside and out—it was a natural fit. Sticking to single-player meant that they could focus on one thing and deliver it with a high degree of polish.

So they wanted something fast, in the vein of Diablo, but it had to be good. Those requirements rarely add up to anything worthwhile, but the strategy for creating the game left a lot of room for iteration. "The MO at Runic is to 'always have a playable build.' The game has been essentially playable weeks after its inception, and so everyone can play and comment and tweak—we have constant, daily iterations of the game, so playtesting really began a year ago and has only ramped up since then with our hardworking QA team," Russell told Ars. They also invited the friends and family of the developers to come in and play to make sure the game was fun for the more casual fans. The goal was simple: to make the game fun to play, even if that meant focusing on single-player.

Torchlight should have quite the future ahead of it. "We are making an MMO version, due out in about two years. Torchlight with a co-op would be fun, but it just wasn't feasible in our initial dev cycle, and even if we could add it at this point, we'd essentially be competing with our own game."

Digital distribution makes life easier for indies

When it came to distribution, Runic cast the net wide. "We basically approached all the usual suspects—Steam, Direct2Drive, etc, and began setting up those partnerships and agreements," Russell said. "There is definitely an ease-of-use and approachability with digital downloads that is a huge help to the indie developer, but getting the word out there that you have a game for sale that’s a lot of fun to play is always going to be the trickiest part of the business, especially for a small company like ours, with zero marketing budget."

Luckily, the community around the game has done quite the job of evangelizing for them; a thread in our own forum has resulted in many buying the $20 game. That price point—and the low requirements—weren't an accident. "The price point was really set with the idea of making Torchlight as widely available as possible, which we extend to our settings too; we don't use shaders, and have optimized the game to even run on a netbook," Russell explained. "We want your granny to be able to play if she wants to!" The game features three character classes, with around 20 hours of gameplay for each play-through.

That 20-hour mark is somewhat misleading, however. After you beat the game the first time, you unlock a never-ending dungeon as well as more quests to help you get to the level 100 cap. You'll also be able to enchant an item and pass it on to your "descendant," the next character you play with. Shared stashes allow you to pass items from one character to another; while you play with one character, you can be looting for everyone. "That way, if you are playing a melee character and find a great gun, you can keep it in the shared stash for your ranged character, rather than selling it," Russell told Ars.

"We've made Torchlight to have extremely high replayability, the randomized dungeons, help too." He also notes that they're releasing the complete set of developer tools used to create the game itself. "We know the modding community is going to go crazy, and folks will be able to play with tons of new content, levels, monsters, and more."

But is the game good?

In a word: yes. The addiction grabs you very quickly, and the ability to share loot as well as level your in-game pet go a long way to making this a very inviting game with a fair amount of challenge in the higher levels. The replayability is also very high, and the $20 price tag puts it into the realm of an impulse buy.

If you're a fan of the genre, there really is no excuse not to pick this one up, and my mouse-finger is already itching to play more. It can be a lonely experience at times, but by sticking to what it knew and leveraging the best of PC gaming, Runic Games has created a high-quality title that's worth the buzz. This is a keeper.