The third entry into the popular hack-and-slash franchise Torchlight has been announced. Formerly known as a free-to-play game Torchlight Frontiers, the developers have shared the news to redesign the game into a traditional premium game. You can look forward to Torchlight III sometime this year on Steam. Check out the announcement trailer here!
The future is looking very bright for hack-and-slash games. First, Blizzard announced the long-awaited sequel Diablo IV, but while that is going to take a while until it gets released, fans of the genre can look forward to Torchlight III this year. Out of nowhere, developer Echtra announced the game today, but it was kind of out already. Kind of.
Along with this name change comes a major shift in our design approach to Torchlight III. Torchlight III will be released as a premium title. For one box-price, you will own the game and be able to play the way that you want, online or off. Over the past year, we have gathered massive amounts of feedback from our Alpha testers. After reviewing this feedback, discussing with our internal teams, and receiving guidance from our publisher, we determined that this was the best course for the game. This shift helps bring Torchlight back to its roots and makes it the true sequel to Torchlight I & II that it was always meant to be.
You see, the developer has been working on a F2P spin-off with Torchlight Frontiers. In fact, the game was already being played in a paid-alpha state. But the developers made the difficult decision to redesign Frontiers into a regular paid game. And thus, Torchlight III was born.
The shift from F2P naturally requires many design changes and you can read about them in detail in the developer blog post. The important takeaway here is, that Torchlight III will not feature any F2P mechanics, will include all content in one purchase and will be playable both online & offline.
