I was recently recommended this game by fellow Dopers on a suggestions thread in this very forum, and I continue to be surprised at how good this game is.
For those unfamiliar, Avernum is a remake of Spiderweb Software’s Exile series. It’s a miniscule 7.5 MB download, which means the graphics are ancient (but serviceable), but don’t worry, as a whole lot of love has been into the gameplay. The demo includes a fairly large portion of the game, and you can pay $25 to unlock the whole thing (no additional downloads required).
The premise is simple: The corrupt empire (yeah, I know) has banished your party to the underworld of Avernum via a 1-way portal, and it’s up to you to figure out how to deal. A whole civilization has formed as over 90,000 people have been sent under.
What I love about it:
The world is HUGE, and you can go pretty much as far as you want from the start. There are dozens of towns and dungeons, many of which you can only get to via boat, or through hidden passages, or crossing poisonous swamps and burning hot lava. You’re given plenty of warning (if you choose to talk to people and read signs, that is) if you’re getting into territory that may be too dangerous, but you can still do it if you’re feeling adventurous. No railroading here.
You can customize the crap out of your characters, in a way that’s quite reminiscent of Fallout. There are quite a few character classes to choose from, but those are really just guidelines, as you can create custom classes by adjusting skill points however you like. You get a decent number of skill points per level, and you can allocate them however you like. Your sorcerer can be as agile as a thief and your soldier can learn mage spells, if you like. In addition to learning skills like potion-making or priest spells, you have to actually learn the recipes or spells in the game; for example, 6 mage spell skill points give you the potential to cast Ice Lances, but you have to find someone to teach it to you in the game before you can use it. There’s also a Fallout-style trait system, where you can have special benefits at the cost of an EXP penalty.
The combat also reminds me of Fallout (hmm, I wonder why I like this game ;)), with a certain amount of Action Points that let you move or use abilities/attack. Thus, it plays a bit like a turn-based strategy game, albeit simplified. In towns/dungeons, battles stay in the same map as the normal one you walk around in, and you can initiate combat whenever you want. On the world map, there are wandering groups of things walking around, and when you run into them, a battle may begin. I love the fact that they’re avoidable, and that they may turn out to be friendly or even merchants who you can buy stuff off. There’s not much variety in the type of encounter, but I love the fact that it’s not a Final Fantasy-style random battle thang.
OK, so the graphics are primitive as all get out and towns often look the same, but I love the care that has been shown in the design of things. The layouts of villages and dungeons just make so much more sense than I’ve seen in a lot of games. For example, in one enemy fort, the entrance is guarded by inside archers firing through arrow slits, and the actual path to the front door will get boiling goo poured on your party members, damaging them every step. The thing I love is: You can actually go upstairs and find where they’re pouring from and take out the mechanism to stop it from happening again. Also, when I saw the fort on the world map, I saw two groups of enemies just standing still behind the fort. When I ran into them, the game actually gave me the option to attack or leave; the creatures didn’t seem to want to fight. I finally discovered later that those groups were protecting the back entrance to the fort, where, of course, there was no burning crap poured on you.
The game moves quickly. Unless someone is attacking you, you can move through town and world map at light speed. No realistic walking animation here. In fact, no walking animation at all.
The game has a sense of humor. One of the game’s limitations is that other than the quest-giver, most people don’t seem to react to when you accomplish great things for the town (it’s included in an overall Reputation, though). However, in one case, you’re given the option to mention it to a watchman in a town. Their response boils down to: “Yeah that’s great, do you want a cookie? OK then, shut up because I’m on the lookout, fool.”
The story, while somewhat cliche, is revealed pretty neatly. I’m probably 1/3 - 1/2 of the way through the game at this point, and I like that you continually uncover bits of lore and history about the world as you talk with people, do quests, read books, etc. It’s never really force-fed to you, and it provides a nice over-arching theme to your exploration.
The game’s not perfect, however. There is very little choice in how you complete quests, and there’s no evil path, other than being a psychopathic bastard that just kills everyone. I’m not sure if that would b0rk up your game or not. It’s certainly no Fallout, despite some similarities.
Also, the combat is a bit primitive; the range on spells/bows seems unclear, and there’s no way to actually move through your fellow party members without trading places with them (and this doesn’t work if they’ve already gone that turn). Also, your fighters’ hit rate at the beginning is atrocious and somewhat frustrating; I think it just takes getting used to, and it will get better. But spell-slingers are definitely king at the start.
Another thing, the game often doesn’t graphically distinguish tiles that have special events happen on them, so you may miss stuff like that. For example, some mushroom tiles you can harvest, most you can’t, and I haven’t seen any way to tell them apart. Also, on the overworld map, events happen on tiles that may not be obvious at all, as the thing it’s referencing might be a hut 2-3 tiles away.
Anyway, I guess I should end this glurgefest. It’s been a while since I’ve played a RPG that has me concerned with PLAYING about 99% of the time as opposed to watching cut-scenes or loading screens or even animations of people walking from here to there or spell effects and stuff like that. It’s addictive as hell, and I can still scarcely believe that it’s only a 7.5 MB download.
Thanks for the infos. I like reading detailed opinions like that about game I could potentially enjoy.
Actually, I downloaded the trial version quite a long time ago, but for some reason I can’t remember I didn’t like it and gave up almost at the beginning. I might give it a try again in the future.
Weird, I was just thinking about Exile: Escape from the Pit and downloaded Avernum but I haven’t tried it yet. Now I’m excited to play it this weekend!
This looks pretty cool. I’ll definitely give it a shot this weekend.
If we’re on the subject of old school style CRPGs, then you should check out Elona. It’s a graphical Roguelike developed in Japan, and translated to English. The main features are:
Multiple race/class combos. Some pretty cool stuff but not quite as advanced as Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It has the basic Figher/Rogue/Mage etc, along with non-combat like performers/farmers/fishers.
You’re not confined to a single dungeon like most Roguelikes. There are tons of dungeons and towns to explore. The towns are static but the dungeons (once you enter them) are random.
Lots of quests you can do, some static but mostly random. The quests give you “medals” that help you gain new skills or improve current ones.
You can make money in MANY different ways. Fight in dungeons and sell loot. Become a thief and steal loot/gold. Make a farm and sell veggies. Make a breeders farm, capture monsters, and when they have offspring you can sell them. Become a performer and play music and parties. Build a shop and have one of your party members sell loot while you’re away.
There is a godly amount of loot in the game that ranges from “crap” to “holy crap that is amazing”. There are tons and tons of ways to customize your gear. There is absolutely no “optimal” gear set in the game. Everything has its strengths and weaknesses.
You can recruit other adventurers or capture monsters “Pokemon” style. They will fight at your side. Many have cool abilities like magic missile, heals, buffs/debuffs. But some abilities like fire breath can be bad because it can hit you and destroy items laying on the ground… The higher your charisma the more allies you can have.
You can choose to worship one of about seven Gods which will give you certain stat boosts and eventually give you a unique pet (right now I have a robot!) and unique abilities.
You can build homes/castles and design and decorate them with goods you’ve bought. The better the decorations the more income you get from the kingdom.
The game is FREE. And it seems to be updated about once a month, fixing bugs and adding new features. They might eventually ask for money but I doubt it.
I know there’s a ton of other stuff I can’t think of at the top of my head. But you should really give this game a shot, especially if you’re into Roguelikes. The graphics are pretty basic but much better than ASCII that most other games in this genre still use. Be warned, this game can be very addicting. I think I’ve spent almost 100 hours in the month I’ve been playing.
Here’s the Wiki if you want more information or a link to the download. It’s 24 megs and 51 megs for the music (optional). Enjoy!
Back in the day (mid 90’s I think?), Exile 3 was an incredibly great RPG. Incredibly open ended, tons of stuff to do, lots of character options, and a world that actually changed over time. Unfortunately, I was never really able to get into the other games in the series. Not quite sure why. I was pretty happy to find about about the Avernum series and happily played through 3. The old game is great but has not aged all that well so a remake is was definitely deserved.
I’ve been trying to play through Avernum 4 and 5 but I haven’t gotten all that far yet. They’re certainly good, but they just don’t seem to stack up to number 3. I think it’s in large part because the world map is gone. Without it, the world just feels so much more linear, and the opening plot hooks aren’t quite as good.
They are all fine games, but simply put, Exile 3 and Avernum 3 are, in my book, far and away the best in the series. I heartily recommend them.
Spiderweb Software’s games are excellent, and I recommend most of the ones I’ve played. The Avernum series is really good, and try the Geneforge series for something different but equally fun. For a bonus, you can even be somewhat evil in the Geneforge games and change the endings (which are multiple anyway) quite a bit.
Not sure if it bothered you, but if you’re like me, it is a bit of a hard transition when you’re used to games like Baldur’s Gate or heck, even Fallout, which represent the world in much more graphical detail. Before starting Avernum, I’d just been playing Diablo II, whose visuals and animation are incredibly lush by comparison. However, now I can’t even bear the thought of picking up Diablo II again (I’ve installed and un-installed it three times, and I’m still on Act III), as it’s just a pure, unfulfilling hackfest on rails.
Also, if you’re just getting started in Avernum, the combat can be pretty frustrating. I’d recommend getting the spell Ice Lances for your magic-using character as soon as possible. It deals good damage to multiple targets, and it gets more powerful the higher your Intelligence and Mage Spells skills get.
Ｉ ｗｏｎｄｅｒ ｉｆ Ｊｅｆｆ Ｖｏｇｅｌ （ｔｈｅ Ａｖｅｒｎｕｍ ｃｒｅａｔｏｒ） is trying to make parellels between Avernum’s surface empire and the Cultural Revolution. So many of the people in Ａｖｅｒｎｕｍ ｗｅｒｅ ｓｅｎｔ ｄｏｗｎ ｂｅｌｏｗ ｂｅｃａｕｓｅ ｏｆ ｓｉｍｐｌｅｓｔ ｄｉｓａｇｒｅｅｍｅｎｔ ｗｉｔｈ imperial policy. You even meet an actress that got sent through the portal because she performed in a play that portrayed an imperial expedition in a tragic light (instead of a glorious one, I suppose), which parallels many artists and performers in the Revolution that did get sent away to camps (or worse) because of similar tiny infractions.
I guess I may be overthinking it, as it’s probably just a common oppressive theme, but I ｋｅｅｐ ｓｅｅｉｎｇ ｓｉｍｉｌａｒｉｔｉｅｓ ｔｈｅｒｅ．
I was curious if anyone else had seen some similar games. I don’t want much in graphics, but I do like things up to the Super NES level, at least. (Actually, I can fudge that and would have gotten Avernums except that 25$ a pop is alittle harsh.)
Thanks, I guess, but would you mind specifying the odd?
As for other games like this, have you tried the Ultima series? I’ve heard many good things about the earlier Ultima games, but I’ve yet to try them myself. Also, there’s always Fallout/Baldur’s Gate/Planescape: Torment, but you’ve probably played them already.
I like the Exile games, but not the Avernum remakes. The new 2.5D graphics make it hard to tell things apart, and the smaller spell list feels like a step backwards.
