Contact
Subscribe


Avernum V Released

Feb 19, 2008
By .
Gaming, Geekery

Good news on the indie crpg front: indie leader Spiderweb Software has just released Avernum V for Windows. I'm downloading the demo now.

Spiderweb Software has developed the impressive Exile, Geneforge, and Avernum lines of indie crpgs. They're perfect for people hankering back to the golden era of Ultima and Wizardry — big on gameplay without so much eye candy. The mechanics and gameplay of the Avernum line of games has become increasingly polished, and it still offers the joy of discovery that you often don't get with the big-budget graphics-card-taxing titles. Enjoy in good health. Look for a review later.

Last 5 posts by Ken White

1 Comment
Tags , ,

1 Comment

  1. Grandy  •  Feb 19, 2008 @4:35 pm

    Patrick outta try this. The Avernum series in general is good, though it's taken a different turn starting with 4. The engine change from 3->4 is not unlike the change from Ultima V -> VI, that is there are no longer any load screens to move from town to dungeon and such. It's all one rather large map, and 5 carries this engine tweak forward. It mostly works well. . .

    It's very, very good IMO. If you've been playing the series, it'll be something of a shock in terms of the story – the story here is much much grittier I think. Vogel has been pointing it in this direction, ever so subtly, but it was really interesting to see where things in the caves were heading (and to see them from the perspective of "the other guys" to boot).

    The story is among Vogel's best – minimally but solidly presented. The character development system is good but also perhaps posessing of the game's biggest flaw – it will require some good planning for your characters to get by at later levels. IMO, it's a little too unforgiving in that respect, but that's a topic for another time (and it's not a total failure, and there is a good deal of choice available in the actual development, but it was Vogel's first game where I felt like I needed to read over the strategy discussions for party creation in the spiderweb forums). The killing & the looting is top notch; one of Vogel's stated goals with the game was to scale back on the amount of combat but present more interesting combats to the player. I think he did an excellent job here – there are plenty of weird monsters and "boss" types to torment the player.

    A5 strategy central

    Partly Design