Torchlight Infinite's Afterlight season reveals the aRPG's future and reminds us there's always room for change

With Torchlight: Infinite launching SS13 Afterlight on July 16th, we got a chance to fly to Shanghai, China, to witness the annual TorchCon 2026 first-hand. Is there more to expect from the aRPG on top of the quality-of-life upgrades, visual enhancements, and new playable hero this season?

Three years of Torchlight: Infinite

There's no doubt that the aRPG has evolved through the years since it launched a little over three years ago. Personally, though, I did feel overwhelmed jumping into it for the first time as a newbie, which is common when you're dipping your toes into something that's already been going on for a while.

Thankfully, XD Games reassured us at TorchCon that they're addressing balance issues constantly, trying their best to stabilise drop rates, drop value and changes as the seasons progress. They've said they're trying to manage introducing new stuff, as some people might find it fresh while others might find it too unfamiliar/tedious. And for newbies, they've added a selectable Pactspirit for beginner quests. This comes with gameplay that doesn't rely heavily on Pactspirits as well to keep everything well-adjusted.

These newbie-friendly upgrades are welcome from the point of view of Paan, one of the lucky winners of the TorchCon draw, where three selected Hunters got to fly to Shanghai for the event, all expenses paid. "(These) quality-of-life updates are well-needed to help the game establish more new players. I'm also excited to see what kind of loot we can find with the new mechanic and see what's going to happen."

He's referring to the escort content that Afterlife's introducing - a seasonal mechanic where you deliver an unnamed coffin in the Netherrealm by making sure the funeral procession goes without a hitch. You'll need to carry souls to the underworld while keeping evil Wraiths at bay - all in a day's work for a Night Watcher.

More mobile, more fun

Another issue I personally ran into each time I played was that the text was simply far too small for squinty old me. The thing about Torchlight: Infinite is that, being a mobile project first, it's already done its mobile optimisations from the planning stage, where the devs have foregone automatic combat and automatic pathfinding to prevent bots.

During the press tour at the XD Games office, though, I was able to hang back and chat a little bit with Engine Lead Bailiang Gong, and he reassured me that they're still continuously optimising for mobile, especially when it comes to making sure everything is playable on a variety of devices.

They are, apparently, trying to strengthen their PC presence as they've noticed a trend of players shifting towards the platform, but one particular sight that caught my attention at the office was the row of smartphones lined up on a desk attached to all sorts of cables and numbers running on multiple monitors - it almost looked like the phones were being prepped and monitored for surgery.

Naturally, I asked what that was all about, and Bailiang confirmed that those are, indeed, how phones get tested for performance to make sure all devices work with the game. This is just one of the mobile optimisations we can keep looking forward to.

"Hopefully that works out well," says PoE Refugee, another one of the three Hunters who won the fan tour, when I picked his brain about all the new adjustments we were shown later in the trip. "Because they're changing a lot of how the game looks, and it looks better - I hope it means that it's gonna run smoother on my phone."

The torch burns on

I suppose with something that's already established itself for a few years now, it's always going to be a challenge to balance end-game content with the removal of barriers to entry. In my case, for instance, the hero I love playing the most is Iris 1 - Growing Breeze, particularly because I can let my spirit magus do my bidding for me without needing to spam the Attack button, because the UI is complicated enough as it is, you know?

That's just lazy ol' me, though, but perhaps I'm also on to something here. Simplifying things, it seems, is also welcoming even for veteran players, as PoE Refugee - who's been playing Torchlight: Infinite since launch - puts it.

"The main thing I'm really excited about is the new seasonal mechanic. I like that it's an in-map mechanic - you don't have to go out of the map or do some sort of complicated setup outside of the map," he tells me. "The second thing that I really like is that they're trimming a lot of the bloat. They're removing Dream, and I think basically they're going to move forward in the direction of having new seasons strengthen existing mechanics. I like that rather than having so many different complicated systems."

At the end of the day, it's always a good thing when the developers not only take the time to listen to what their community is saying but also implement much-needed changes to satisfy the players' needs. Seeing all the hard work that goes into Torchlight: Infinite at the office with my own two eyes has reinforced that - sometimes, we forget that actual people are behind all this, and they do listen and take action.

And when they do, as evidenced by Paan and PoE Refugee's excitement for the new season, the players definitely respond back - and that's all you really need to keep the torch burning.