Avernum

By: Bill Stiteler

Genre: Turn Based RPG

Format: Shareware/CD

Developer: Spiderweb Software

Publisher: Spiderweb Software

Minimum Requirements: 10MB RAM, 20MB hard drive space, 16 bit color monitor at 800x600 resolution, CD-ROM (unless shareware version)

Network Feature: No

3Dfx Support: No

Retail Price: $25.00 shareware/$31.00 CD

Availability: Out Now

You've heard of Recovering Catholics? Well, there's a similar group of which I am a part; the Adult Geeks. Specifically the Role Playing Game (RPG) Geek.

I can't deny it, it's too much a part of me. There are parts I find embarrassing (impassioned debates on the value of Tika to the quest for the DragonLance, owning the original Marvel Super Heroes game), but it is a great comfort to belong to a community. And believe you me, there are a lot of Adult Geeks out there. Here, I'll prove it to you:

The Keep on the Borderlands.

That sound you just heard was of a mass rolling of eyes and sighs being exhaled. For those of you not in the know, Adventure B2: "The Keep on the Borderlands" was, and is still, perhaps the quintessential Dungeons and Dragons adventure. In other words, a dungeon crawl. And there's that sound again!

Ah, the dungeon crawl! Let me lay out for you, if I may, the plot for every D&D adventure from the mid 70s until...uhm... Anyway, a group of characters consisting of one cleric, one thief, one mage, and an indeterminate number of fighters assembles to enter a cave/catacomb/ruin/structure abandoned for unknown reasons yet the generous town council wants to know why. Displaying sweep-and-clear tactics that wouldn't be seen again until Rainbow Six, these unlikely heroes would kill everything that didn't speak Common (don't ask), rescue everything that did, disarm traps whose intricacy would give Stephen Hawking pause, and end up with the ubiquitous +1 sword, carrying more gold pieces than you'll find in Switzerland. Electrum pieces were always left behind.

Who the heck was minting electrum, anyway?

But I digress. If you were too young to wonder about the moral ambiguities of going into a species' home and slaughtering them all, the physics of how much 5,000 pieces of gold actually weighs, or wondering what would happen if a magic-user actually did pick up a sword, dungeon crawls were a great time. It was a social gathering, and you got to put that big, otherwise useless brain of yours to work.

Then the geeks grew up, and so did the roleplaying games. Well, not the computer games, however. No, the dungeon crawl is still alive and well...Diablo is the dungeon crawl in it's purest form; Unreal, Quake, and other first-person shooters are just its bastard offspring, and there are still tons of actual RPG/quest games coming out. Balder's Gate is coming to the Mac soon, and Spiderweb Software gives us Avernum, a Mac-first RPG set in a sunless world where your characters have been banished for crimes against the state.

Avernum reminds me so much of old D&D games that I found myself looking for my three six-sided dice. You know, the lucky ones. Anyway, upon arriving in the cavernous world of Avernum, your characters find that a civilization of sorts has been set up here by the other outcasts. Outcasts who have problems. Problems that could be solved, if only there were some brave souls who would venture out to find the required solutions, which would then allow you to find other outcasts who had bigger problems, requiring even braver individuals to solve even bigger quests, etc., etc.

I'm reminded of the hilarious film, Rustler's Rhapsody. Tom Berenger plays the Good Guy who rides in and knows what's going to happen every step of the way because the same thing happens in every town (there's a railroad coming in, the local cattle baron is evil, but his daughter is not, and the blacksmith is a sweet guy until you burn his shop down). Avernum took me back to Pool of Radiance and other games of the ilk--"Oh, you're the guy who needs the ingredient for the potion that you'll let me have a bit of so I can get to the next level. How have things been?"

As far as advancing the genre, Avernum is nothing to write home about. The graphics are better than the boxy cut-outs I remember from the TSR/SSI releases of days gone by, but not by much. The sprites are rounded and have a bit more color to them, but they don't actually move, if you follow me. It's more like they translocate from place to place. Still, I'd rather have that than have to wait fifteen freakin' minutes for a character to turn left.

You can access the interface almost exclusively through the keyboard if you choose. Hit the hot key for talk, and letters pop up over the people in your vicinity (though you may have to move closer). The same goes for looking and--my personal favorite--stealing. Steal while someone is "looking" (that is, are in the same room as you), and your reputation gets hurt. And of course you want to have a good reputation so that everyone will rally behind you, etc., etc. Why is it, in this time of supposedly declining morals, I can't get an RPG where the objective is to screw over the good guys and the idiot townspeople? Hopefully we'll see a Legend of the Five Rings RPG where you can play the Scorpion, but I won't hold my breath.

I like Spiderweb Software. It's not easy to get nostalgic when you're 28 and bitter, but these guys took me back. The tiny sprites making there way across the screen, the townspeople too afraid to wander outside the city walls, but who can tell you more about the wilds than Jane Goodall, and the A to B to C quests, interspersed with a lot of mayhem and bloodshed. Plus Spiderweb is a small company who makes Mac-first games with an intuitive feel.

If you're an Adult Geek, I don't need to tell you any more about this game. If you're not, then I don't want to spoil anything for you. You can also download the demo and give it a try. No, it doesn't bring anything new to the RPG genre, but in a business where two kinds of fire on your particle cannon is considered an amazing innovation, it's awfully refreshing to play a game that knows what its expectations are, and meets them.

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December 02, 2008