In my first post on this blog, I was just finishing up Avernum VI. At last, I have started Avadon, the first game in the new adventure series from my favorite RPG company, Spiderweb. Jeff Vogel has been making these games in his Seattle basement for about 15 years now, I believe. They all run on pretty much the same principles, and they're all massive fun.
Spiderweb's games are all downloadable from the Spiderweb site, all with the free demos usually comprising about a fifth of the whole game. Also, they're pretty cheap for what you get. It's a darned good business model. You can play the game for a week or more, get thoroughly hooked, and then just try to keep from buying it. But also, you certainly know what you're getting. I love the whole idea.
A warning to the curious: these are lowish budget independent games. So, you don't get massively gorgeous graphics--you get some decently rendered cartoons, addicting play, and massive gaming areas. You don't get music, but you do get some sound effects. You don't get to pay $50 for the game, but you get to pay half that and you actually get a real plot, done by a talented human instead of a committee. (Update: Avadon is now on Steam for $9.99, but will be $20 on the website. See this for the reasoning behind that. Personally, I'd still buy it from the website. We need Vogel to stay in business, and his customer service--Linda--is awesome.) You don't get voice acting. Instead, you'll be reading everything, including all the dialogue, but do you get actual imagination and quirky humor. Way worth it and way better than industrially designed games, in my humble opinion. Way more fun.
These games are not, strictly speaking, adventures, because they rely on combat. Combat isn't normally my scene, but I've been playing these Spiderweb games for a good decade now, starting with Nethergate, and I am fully addicted. The combat in these games is all turn-based, so it becomes a puzzle rather than a thumb-wrestling exercise. I leave those to my nephew, highly skilled at thumb-wrestling.
However, these really are adventures in the sense that they are puzzly (with the combat and sometimes with actual puzzles) and you wander around all over a huge world discovering things. We get plenty of loot, which we have to find in nearly the same way as in graphic adventures. RPGs are Adventure's sister category. If you find one you like, joy!
And I take joy in Vogel's games, even though I'm far from the most intrepid RPG fanatic out there. I could care less about the statistics for the characters. I just have fun. My skill level is better than a newbie, obviously, but really, I'm not very good. Fairly typical casual player. I was hesitant to start this right now because Bracken Tor is due out in less than a month, and I'll certainly want to grab that as soon as I can. These Spiderweb games easily take weeks to play, and that's when you devote most of your waking hours to them. Plus, I have Kirkus books coming, although I'm way ahead on those at the moment.
But I decided to wait for awhile after I bought Avadon because the typeface was too small for me to read comfortably. Fortunately, Vogel fixed that problem a good while back. I've just been too busy recently to commit myself to the game.
But it's been calling to me for a good week now, so I decided to just jump in!
I have completed the first task, clearing out the dungeon. In this game you choose to play one character--I chose the shadowwalker because he has the ability to open locks more easily than others, and I'm more than familiar with blademasters, thank you very much.
In order to do our quests, we get to choose one or two other characters to go with us. We always have to leave one behind, but apparently we can switch the other characters fairly often. For the dungeon quest I chose the sorceress, just to get to know how she works. The other choice was the blademaster, and as I said, those are pretty straightforward.
This is a new system to Spiderweb games. It's about halfway between the Avernum and the Geneforge games. (Avernum has a party of four--although you can go it alone if you want--and Geneforge is a party of one, but you can create your own little helpers as you go.)
This first dungeon quest was typical of these games. You have to do some easy-peasy combat to build strength. While there is some trash combat--against rats and spiders--in this quest most of it is plot based, which is very nice. Vogel normally does try to keep his plots bubbling. Also, I've picked up some nice armor and a good weapon for the sorceress.
Of course, in the beginnings of these games you are so weak, as Vogel once put it, that you can barely flush a toilet with both hands, but that is the nature of RPGs. You gain strength as you go until by the end of the game you are strong enough to face down dragons. Vogel keeps the enemies nicely balanced to your evolving strength, so most combat is a bit of a challenge all the way through the game.
Anyway, I have subdued one enemy and slaughtered two others. A fourth escaped (that's part of the plot). So far this is going just about as per normal.
Tomorrow I will meet the infamous Redbeard, the master of Avadon. So we shall see . . .
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