It is no secret that the video gaming industry
has a love affair with technology. Back when the first 3D games came out, video
games were just all about movement. Flight sims—particularly those with six
degrees of freedom games like the Descent series—flourished. Sure, there were
games that broke the mold (one of which is the forebear to the Avernum
series) but most of these only got a cult following and largely took the
backseat. In 1998, Valve’s seminal game, Half-Life, happened. Suddenly, flight
sims vanished and the industry jumped into the first-person shooter bandwagon.
Fast forward to the second half of the first decade of the 2000s and on-rails
shooter focusing on powerful action sequences elevated the FPS industry to new
heights. And QTEs. Lots of QTEs.
It was this predictable sine wave of trends
that killed my fascination for triple A productions. Companies started getting
into projects that were considered to be financially safe—you cannot imagine
the number of Call of Duty clones that popped into existence like drab-hued
mushrooms after a stormy night. There was no experimentation and aside from the
drive to ramp up visual fidelity, no pushing of the envelope. Things started
feeling to be run-of-the-mill affairs, cookie cutter products that rolled out
the digital assembly lines like virtual minions of doom that conquered the
world.
It was a breath of fresh air then that back in
2009 or so, a friend of mine told me about Spiderweb Software and their Avernum
series. Intrigued, I pored over their site. Sure enough, the isometric view and
the hand drawn sprites intrigued me to no end. For some reason though, I didn’t
buy a single one. Which was just as well as recently, the first game in the
series floated on my radar as a remake. I figured that with the new engine and
revamped graphics it was a good time to jump into what Spiderweb Software was
offering.
I never regretted the decision.
I never regretted the decision.
Avernum: Escape from the Pit is a turn-based, isometric, role-playing game that may not have
impressive visuals but stands up on its own—and then some—on its other aspects.
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