So, it looks like Spiderwebsoftware is going to restart (relaunch/reset?) the Avernum series. I’m not sure why exactly. Avadon is a great game, IMO, and while I love the Avernum games they are a bit done by now. They’ve told the story. Why start over? But maybe Vogel feels he has another tale to tell or just wants to create a new engine for it and rework it.
I’m sure I’ll buy it and enjoy it either way, though.
Perhaps Avadon didn’t sell as hoped?
He’s been talking about wanting to update the engine for the older games.
This is a Vogel blog post explaining it a little.
Avernum: Escape from the Pit was already the next game he was going to do while Avadon was in the early development stage.
Before the iPad release Avadon appears to have been a big hit for Spiderweb.
This will make the third iteration of these games, then. Seems strange to me but obviously he’s making a living at it. I’ll buy it, I skipped Avernum because I played Exile back in the day, but that was a loooong time ago now.
Avadon is doing fine, I’m betting. They don’t need huge sales to turn a profit. And yeah, if this is slated to come out so soon, it was in work before Avadon was released. I’m fine with it, but it still seems like an odd choice. They do seem to like to keep two series in play at once, and maybe keeping Avernum going was the wise choice, from a business perspective. I like the Geneforge games a bit more, but both are great series.
Avernum changed enough to feel fresh, I believe that will be the case with AEtP as well. And I think it will wind up with superior mechanics in many areas. Not to mention the engine.
They should be doing fine, isn’t it like a 3 person operation still? Reminds me I need to pick up some of those games.
I’ve tried demos and like what he’s doing but never get around to actually purchasing one. Which is a good place to start at this point?
Avadon, probably. I’ve loved every Spiderweb game I’ve played to date and personally would recommend going through them from the very beginning, buuuut I think most people aren’t as crazy as I am.
And the Avernum rewrite appears to be fusing updated versions of Avadon’s mechanics with a fully created party, overworld map, and other things that were present in the original game, which sounds like a plus to me. My big issue with Avernum coming from the Exile trilogy was that the skill system kept the relative shallowness of their non-spell mechanics, but deflated the spell list significantly. The skill trees of Avadon (tweaked appropriately for a non-class-based system, naturally) would please me significantly more, I suspect.
Also, Avernum has significantly more content than Exile did, and this rewrite should add a good chunk onto that, by Vogel’s account.
This is out for Mac.
I’ll buy it on iPad, but I’m under no impression it’ll be anything other than Exile: Escape from the Pit 2012.
Looks like Avadon’s graphics and skill tree thing will be our Spiderweb Software engine design for the next 5 years as well.
I wish I could buy this on Mac and get a discount on the other versions (especially iPad).
When do we think it is coming out for the iPad?
Q1 2012
Probably early Feb, his turnaround time on the other versions is typically a month or so.
Jeff is saying April for both the windows and iPad version.
it’s a really nice upgrade to the avernum engine. your characters have walking animations! i’m enjoying it tremendously.
Since his stories are usually his strongest and best part of his games - It actually makes sense he would upgrade the engine - perhaps to introduce the series to people who would otherwise not bother with it?
Really looking forward to this, the turn-based combat of these old school style games from Spiderweb just hooks me in everytime.
It’s on Steam today, 20% off!
Boughted.
I’m sure I checked the Spiderweb site a few days a go and the PC version was not released and had no specific date mentioned.
He had been saying April for awhile, and FWIW he had to hold up the PC release to wait for it to come out on Steam (or rather, he said “the PC release has to be coordinated with 3rd party publishers”). I think it’s been ready for a week or two and no longer. Still, this is welcome news.