Avernum has a pretty long history among PC RPG fans, having been remade twice thus far since its initial release as Exile: Escape from the Pit in 1995. Generally, these releases have been timed well, and allow a new player to enter into the series without dealing with dated graphics or awkward installation procedures on account of compatibility issues. This current version came about as the first Avernum has a few glitches when running on Windows 7 64-bit, for example.
TouchArcade: Hello, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the magical and mysterious GDC week last week. Normally, the RPG Reload Pocast will go up on the first Monday of each month, but with GDC that didn't quite pan out. However, better late than never, and this time around, our main topic is Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99 (HD)], which I covered in my RPG Reload column two weeks ago. It's a really interesting open-world RPG done in a classic style which is oddly coming back into vogue of late.
TouchArcade: This week, we're looking at Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99 (HD)] from Spiderweb Software. It's a game with more history behind it than you might think at a glance. Released on Mac in late 2011, with Windows PC and iPad versions following a few months later, it's a remake of Avernum, released in 2000, which itself was a remake of the 1995 game, Exile: Escape From The Pit, Spiderweb Software's first release. Spiderweb Software has been consistently releasing indie RPGs for almost 20 years, a remarkable achievement all on its own. Ultima did not survive, Wizardry somehow transformed into a largely Japan-only niche series, Interplay and Black Isle are both essentially past-tense, and even Bioware seems to be less interested in the kind of games they used to make. Spiderweb Software, on the other hand, is still here, and the company doesn't look to be going anywhere.
Hardcore Droid - An RPG could be an enormous decade-spanning epic or it could have almost no plot at all. It could have a well-written main character or it could have a character that you created. It could be an open-world first person shooter or it could be a top-down, pixelated dungeon crawler—it’s the most experimental genre of games and the most diverse.
