Avernum – Jeff Vogel/Spiderweb Software - 2000 - First time playing?: Yes!

I ummed and ahhed for a while over which version of this game I was going to review. There are three versions of Avernum out there. Those versions are Exile, Avernum and Avernum: Escape from the Pit. We can rule out Escape from the Pit as it’s a much more recent remake that would be impossible to run on any PowerMac, so that leaves us with Exile and Avernum. So, Avernum is a 2000 remake of a much earlier 90s game by the name of Exile, and given the size and length of these CRPGs, in addition to the fact that these games have a ton of sequels, I knew it was only realistic for me to play through one version and not both. This one took three weeks to finish, for frame of reference. Even the likes of Civilization, Escape Velocity and Wolfenstein 3D were done in under a week.

In the end, I settled with Avernum. I adore isometric pixel art, so Avernum was already winning me over aesthetically, but then on top of that, Avernum also has an extremely charming ‘90s-’00s webcomic-esque art style for its character designs, as well as illustrations accompanying all of your stats and skill descriptions on your character sheets, Fallout style. After looking into the artist, it turned out Avernum’s illustrations were done by Phil Foglio, who is one of the two writers and illustrators for webcomic classic Girl Genius (that I have not read but sure have seen panels of on TVTropes a lot), so no wonder the vibe felt so familiar. Also, Avernum isn't freeware or abandonware, unlike most of the games I look at here, and unlike Exile, which is freeware on both Mac and PC. You can buy the full Avernum series (there's seven of them + three remakes) on GOG, but naturally that didn't include the Mac OS 9 compatible versions, so I had to pester Spiderweb Software for help through email with getting older Mac versions of the game, which is enough extra effort for me to settle on reviewing this version over the more readily available Exile. So, shout-out to Jeff Vogel, developer of Spiderweb Software. He's clearly super passionate about what he does and was very helpful.

So, the version I got from Jeff was Avernum 2.0. This version of the game is designed for more compatibility with Mac OS X, and it's already registered when you install it, forgoing the registration numbers usually required. Unfortunately, this version has issues on Mac OS 9, such as the game screen being slightly off-centre and more damningly, not allowing you to load your saved games. This obviously wasn't going to work, so I installed an older shareware version of Avernum, version 1.0.2. Fortunately for me, Avernum 2.0 being installed on my computer was enough to make all versions of Avernum on my computer registered. I'm guessing it saved a license key to my computer that all versions of the game can use. None of the previously mentioned compatibility issues occurred when using 1.0.2, so now we're good to go. As for if you want to get Avernum 1-3 running on Mac OS 9 yourself, you can buy the games directly from Spiderweb Software's website, or you could try what I did, buy from GOG and then send Spiderweb an email with your GOG receipt and request the old Mac versions of the games. I'm hoping that me saying this doesn't result in poor Jeff getting flooded with requests for Mac OS 9 versions of Avernum, but given how small the classic Mac OS fandom is and how little exposure my little website has, he'll hopefully be fine. If he's not fine, please email me and let me know Jeff, and I'm sorry for the trouble.

Was Avernum worth it? Absolutely yes. Jeff is a master of his craft and one of the best game designers on Mac OS as far as I'm concerned. We have previously looked at a Spiderweb Software game, that being Ocean Bound, but that was only published by Spiderweb Software, while it was instead developed by Richard White, a fellow New Zealander like this doll, on the other side of the world from Jeff’s American residence. Either way, Ocean Bound was a good game too, and I've also played a bit of Jeff’s other RPG series, Geneforge, which is also great. My point is, Spiderweb Software’s name being attached to any game is a sign of quality. The time investment due to how massive their games are is the only reason I haven't reviewed them earlier.

The land of Avernum is a vast subterranean system of interconnected caves, one with few ways in and even less ways out. Up on the surface world, the fascistic emperor rules his authoritarian hellscape with an iron fist, committing genocide against all magical beings while subjugating humanity under a cruel dictatorship. Then, the portals to Avernum were devised. One way tickets to an uninhabited wasteland. The empire doesn't know what's on the other side, all that matters is that anyone who goes through it never comes back. Badmouth the empire, say things that are ‘inconvenient’ to the Emperor’s rule, or just break out of the mold of an ideal citizen in any way possible, and you'll be thrown into the portal to Avernum without a second thought, to never see the sky again. Your group of four custom made adventurers are the latest to earn the empire’s ire, and thus are the latest victims to join Avernum’s growing population.

As it turns out, humanity’s drive to survive can be rather stubborn in even the bleakest situations. Avernum may be a damp, hostile land with very little natural resources to sustain human life, but humans found a way. Giant lizards were used as livestock, cave fish were hunted, mushrooms were used as everything from food to drink to light sources and even lumber, via mutations created by Avernum’s finest mages allowing fungi to take on wood-like traits. Even bread is made from a flour-like substance using mushroom powder. The food tastes terrible, but it's enough to survive. Meanwhile the limited resources of rock, ore and mushroom wood were used to build cities, forts and castles. Avernum became a parallel world that developed its own unique society and structure.

But humanity is not alone down here. On one side, they're under attack by the catlike Nephilim, and on the other side the lizardmen Sliths are putting on the pressure. Raids from all sides require strong fortifications and powerful fighters to keep the settlements safe. But are Nephilim and Slith all bad? Of course not. They, like humanity, are doing their best to survive in a hostile land, many doing so peacefully, but the actions of cults and warmongers have sown distrust between the species. All are struggling in Avernum.

And that's where the game drops you in. Escaping the pit is your obvious objective, but the underworld hides much more adventuring for your heroes to achieve on the way out. If you do the bare minimum, you won't even end up fighting any final bosses and you'll get the most anticlimactic ending. Avernum is a massive, sprawling and non-linear game that you primarily make progress in just by exploring, talking to NPCs, doing quests for them, dungeon crawling, fighting, getting stronger and getting the stats, spells, equipment and items needed to explore further. If you've ever played any of the Might & Magic RPGs, the structure of Avernum is very similar to that.

Avernum’s world consists of a large underworld with plenty of dungeons and towns scattered across all of it for you to explore. While exploring, you control all four of your adventurers at once who move in a single file where you tell them to go, either by mouse or numpad, with one turn passing every step. At any time in towns or dungeons you can enter combat mode, which gives you direct control over all your adventurers individually, with how many actions each adventurer is capable of each turn being determined by action points, which can be increased via spells or equipment. Avernum is essentially a tactical RPG, as positioning and optimising your turns is very important.

Your adventurers can attack at melee distance with blades and polearms, or attack at a range with bows, javelins and a variety of magic spells. Magic is divided into mage spells and priest spells, essentially black magic and white magic respectively, though there's a surprising amount of devastating attack spells available for priests and some amazingly powerful support spells for mages. In addition to elemental attacks, magic can also be used for buffing your allies, curing ailments, healing, debuffing enemies and even assisting in exploration via spells that unlock doors and allow for safe travel across poison swamps or lava.

So, for an example of how combat can go, here’s how I was playing Avernum around the mid-game point. Frequently I would open combat with my mage casting haste, a spell that increases your party’s speed and with the right equipment can also give them enough action points to act twice in a turn. This is massively helpful since this then allows the priest to cast more buffs or keep on top of healing better. You could either send a single character into battle with both offensive and defensive buffs this way, or if you're up against a larger horde it may be better to instead buff two different characters so that they can better cover the battlefield and protect the magic casters. The mage meanwhile can now start firing off multitarget spells to provide backup to the melee fighters, in addition to debuffing any particularly strong enemies causing particular issues. Those strong enemies can also be further softened up from a distance by archers, especially useful if they're surrounded by weaker meatshield enemies (which many enemies are capable of spawning in via a mage spell) as that allows you to bypass their defenses and take out the actual danger faster. Archers are also great for fighting enemy archers, since the enemy archer AI tends to keep their distance which makes them harder to attack with melee units when they keep running away.

These are just a few examples of strategies possible, but by no means the only ones available. One of the great strengths of Avernum is just how flexible and open-ended it is. Depending on how you build your party, what spells you unlock, what secrets you find and so on, you could be at the same point of progress with a very different build and play style, owing to Avernum’s non-linear progression. Equipment for instance can make a huge difference, such as swords that in a single swing hit once with physical damage and then hit a second time with elemental magic damage. After finding both a fire longsword and ice longsword, my two otherwise physical fighters in the team were now further diversified by their elemental attacks. Now, if I fight an enemy that's immune to fire damage, I know the ice sword will hit them harder, so now my team is able to cover and exploit more enemy weaknesses than before.

I'm often easily intimidated by character creation in CRPGs. It's hard for me to get a feel for what kind of build I want my characters to have when I'm asked to allocate my skill points before even having played the game. Avernum makes things easier by having a preset starting team that you can choose if the idea of making your own from scratch is overwhelming, but also in addition to this, the options the player chooses in character creation are merely a starting point. Every level up awards you with more skill points that you can pour into leveling up any stat you want, as you begin to figure out what's most important to how you play each individual character. My rogue for instance was initially built primarily for dexterity as I intended for her to be focused entirely on archery, but as I found myself having her regularly attacking with melee weapons more and more, I decided to start leveling up her strength stat more and quickly caught it up to her dexterity. You can even have a physical attacker start using magic just by putting some skill points into priest or mage spells.

Stats in general are also often versatile enough that they have practical usages for characters that otherwise wouldn't need them, preventing many level ups from being a waste. Strength for example. Not super important for a mage or priest build, given that the intelligence stat is what determines their magic points and spell effectiveness. However, it is still worth giving your magic users a few strength levels regardless, as strength influences how many items your character can carry at once before becoming over encumbered. Several of your primary stats also influence other tertiary stats, such as the effectiveness of your potion making and arcane lore stats being tied to your intelligence stat.

But strengthening your characters isn't entirely down to leveling up and equipment. Doing sidequests and finding secrets can also reward you with new spells, abilities, potion recipes and more. Part of why the non-linear structure and exploration aspects of Avernum are so satisfying is because of how rewarding they are to discover. Hidden passageways are everywhere, with Doom-style secret hunting being encouraged, often hiding grimoires containing the level 3 variants of your mage and priest spells. While level 1 and 2 variants of spells can be simply purchased from magic tutors with gold, the level 3 versions of those spells, the highest spell level and their ultimate form, are only learnable through these grimoires, which also can only even be read if your party has the accumulative arcane lore to be able to understand the text in question. You have to work quite a bit harder for level 3 spells, but they're well worth it, often gaining new properties at higher levels. For instance, that extremely useful haste spell I mentioned earlier? Once it's at level 3, it becomes multitarget and hastens your entire party in a single spell cast which is immensely helpful. Other spells allow further exploration of the world once leveled up. The priest spell that lets you walk across poison swamps without taking damage for instance can only be used to also cross lava once you've got the level 3 version of that spell. Finding any of these spells opens up the game world just a bit more, either by simply allowing you to more safely combat enemies blocking your passage, or instead by getting spells that break down physical barriers in the world. It gets exciting, finding new spells that now allow you to complete sidequests that you were walled in earlier, which then results in even more quests opening up upon completion, during which you get enough money to buy new abilities and level training and equipment and spells that then get you strong enough that you can move into the next region where there's even more cities and dungeons filled with sidequests and spells and treasure and unique equipment, and bam, you got so absorbed that you didn't even notice it's now 4AM, you've been playing all night.

As far as writing goes, Avernum’s blend of humour in a dark and unforgiving world is extremely colourful and endearing. As much as I love the cartoony comic art style, I wondered if it would actually suit the narrative of being exiled by an oppressive government to a barely inhabitable world where humanity struggles to survive under awful living conditions, but it manages to work. NPCs may consist entirely of a small selection of stock recycled sprites and only get a few lines of dialogue, but they're genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and have a lot of character in those small bits of dialogue they provide, while also providing more and more subtly delivered exposition to expand on the lore and world building with, in addition to giving you small snippets of what the surface world is like as well, through the stories of how the residents of Avernum ended up stuck here. The setting of Avernum being fairly unique also helps, subverting the usual high fantasy hallmarks of lush countrysides with elves and dwarves for something more gloomy and oppressive, but also with its own kind of wonder and beauty that your adventurers slowly start to appreciate as they explore this underworld more.

Want to know how silly Avernum can be? There's a part where you are told that there are spiders that are friendly and can talk. This is already goofy, but then you're also told that one of the friendly spiders is looking for help, and that spider’s name is Spider. You then go to the spider cave and discover that every single named spider is called Spider. Now, what kind of personality would you expect these spiders to have? What do you think their speech patterns and mannerisms would be like? Did you guess ‘airheaded bimbo’? Yeah, so every single spider here is ditzy, absent-minded, cheerful, upbeat, quickly cheer up any time they feel down, and are also all extremely thirsty. They can not go through any dialogue tree without either gushing about cute spider boys or straight up flirting with the player characters. I love them so much, they're adorable.

With all that said however, Avernum isn't the kind of game where you get really invested in the characters. While they're memorable, their limited dialogue, generic sprites and lack of ongoing presence in the story outside of their few specific quests results in you only really getting a brief glimpse of their lives. Avernum’s narrative draw is less about the characters and more about the richness of the world itself and the lore that those characters within it reveal. It’s fascinating seeing how in spite of everything against them, the people of Avernum still found a way to thrive, with their own unique culture and way of life.

Now, let's talk about the presentation. I just mentioned that the NPC sprites are very limited and reuse the same handful of stock sprites repeatedly. This is somewhat indicative of Avernum’s very charming but admittedly rough audiovisual assets. While the game has built up a niche yet dedicated fandom, Avernum didn't review too hot with critics back in 2000, primarily down to the presentation. Characters don't have walk cycles and instead just snap to different positions on the grid-based map without any sprite animation when they move, sprites are tiny, hard to make out and often blend into the background (especially the zombies), there's no music aside from a short title screen jingle, so on and so on. Oh, there’s also a part where the game claims the NPC you’re talking to is male and he’s blatantly using one of the stock female NPC sprites. That’s not even a complaint, that’s another plus as far as I’m concerned. CRPGs are always improved by femboys. Honestly though? I don't want to be patronising, but for a mostly solo developed indie title from 2000 sold at a budget price? Given the massive scope of the game, I think that the presentation does an admirable job of managing to convey the rich world of Avernum to the player with a lot of aesthetic charm. Even if the lack of music is disappointing to me and certain enemy types blending into the environment is a serious issue, I like the Phil Foglio art, I like the game’s isometric pixel art and I like how much information the UI can convey to the player at once. I like looking at Avernum. The game looks good, as far as I'm concerned. Could really do without that stock sound effect of someone biting into an apple that's used any time a monster bites you however, that's gross.

I do have criticisms other than celery_bite.wav and zombie camouflage. Mages have the ability to summon monsters to fight for them, which is rad, but the summoned monster is chosen randomly and has a chance to be a horde of the same kind of monster as what you're fighting such as skeletons or Nephilim, which sucks because now the screen is filled with identical looking skeletons and half of them want to bone you, as in screw you over, and the other half want to bone you, but like in a consensual loving way. There's no way to tell them apart aside from using the look command to individually select skeletons and see if they're described as hostile or not in the text log.

The journal system is also pretty bad. Rather than having an automatic quest log, Avernum instead allows you to save dialogue spoken by NPCs to your journal, after which you can bring said journal up at any time to see the text in question, alongside the NPC’s name and where in Avernum you spoke to them. I'm fine with this, in fact I find it kinda charming, but there's also no way to sort the order of your saved notes in the journal so it's always pretty messy. Even worse, deleting a note doesn't remove the page from the journal, but instead replaces it with a blank page that you have to still scroll through until you get to the pages with actual notes on them. Not only is this annoying because it clutters your journal, but it can also make things even more unorganised as the blank pages are filled in when you take two notes. Imagine for instance that you have a blank page on page 5 and another blank page on page 17. Now imagine that you talk to an NPC that says two important things about a single quest that you need to take note of both of. Now the first part of that mission briefing will be on page 5, and you have to flick through 12 pages before you finally get to the second half of that same briefing on page 17.

The pacing also slows down pretty bad near the end of the game. Once you've explored the furthest ends of the world map and visited most of the towns, there can be an excessive amount of back and forth as you relay messages between NPCs on opposite sides of the massive overworld and comb the land for more key items and level 3 spells, as well as having to take extra long detours to reach specific towns with specific facilities that might not be present at the nearest towns such as item identifiers and fletcheries. There is no fast travel system aside from the recall emeralds, an item that warps you from anywhere in the overworld back to the starting town, but that only gets you to one destination out of dozens, so it doesn't save as much time as I would like. The boats you use to travel across water in the underworld are also annoying as they are always left in the exact spot you left them for the rest of the game. You can’t recall them in any way, they’ll never respawn by the docks, and there’s a finite amount of boats you can buy from those docks, so if you forget where the boats are located that can result in yet more confused back-and-forth combing of the overworld.

For a more specific criticism, there's a nasty temporary point of no return during one of the final dungeons of the game, locking you into a gauntlet of strong enemies followed by a brutal boss fight and not allowing you to escape until you defeat said boss. This isn't as well telegraphed as a point of no return as the rest of the endgame dungeons are, and it could very easily brick saves if you go in unprepared. The boss in question is much harder than anything else the game has to throw at you, so you'll need a lot of resources like potions and specific spells and equipment to stand a chance at survival. Make backup saves every now and again or things could get really nasty.

Oh, also, “Cast” is misspelled as “Case” on the UI. I didn't notice many other typos or errors in the rest of the game’s writing, so how this one slipped by is beyond me. I'd bully the game about this more, but given that it was fixed in version 2.0, that's on me for insisting on playing an older version for Mac OS 9 compatibility. Such is the kind of sacrifices OS 9 diehards make by refusing to use OS X unless it's absolutely necessary. Damn, do I wish OS 9 my beloved was supported for just a few more years.

Fatigue may have set in a bit by the end, but overall I still greatly enjoyed Avernum and highly recommend it to anyone who's a fan of CRPGs. The rudimentary graphics and low-fi sound design hide the game’s rich atmosphere and world building, accompanied by rock-solid combat, character building and exploration that's more than capable of holding its own against its higher budget inspirations in the genre. It’s a classic, and one of the best games to have made its debut on Mac. The Avernum collection on GOG includes all seven games for only $12 USD, which is incredible value if this kind of RPG is your thing, as even just the first game is enough to potentially keep you occupied for months. If you want something a little polished however, there's the modern remake, Avernum: Escape from the Pit, as an alternative.

- Page written by MSX_POCKY, 1st August 2025