Avernum 5 Wrap Report

Major Challenges

The first and biggest challenge is the simple lack of manpower. Writing a full-length game by myself is pretty exhausting, especially with two small children in the house. There was a lot of crunch time. I've spent the last three months trying to recuperate. A lot of Rock Band has been played.

I also tried to develop a game that would be fun to write. I figured out the things I enjoyed making the most, and I filled the game with those elements. For example, Avernum has a lot of humor.

The second challenge was game balance. Balancing an RPG is really hard. On one hand, there are the hardcore users, who have been playing my games for over a decade, know all the tricks, and want an ever more difficult experience. On the other, there are the many casual users, most of whom have never even touched an RPG before, who get themselves slaughtered very easily. Trying to keep the regulars and the newbies happy at the same time is very hard.

I have dealt with this by trying to make the basic, default difficulty very easy while, at the same time, making the higher setings pretty punishing. I didn't entirely succeed. The hardcores sometimes genuinely seem to want an impossible game, and the regular one seems a little too difficult near the end for regular old folks. But each game, I think I get closer.

Another big challenge was keeping the story straight. One disadvantage of working alone on a big, sprawling storyline with lots of different characters and potential paths for the party is that it's easy to forget about plot threads and things to put in. In Avernum 5, you can hunt down the assassin, or you can switch sides and join him. This creates a lot of eventualities I needed to remember and account for.

In the end, I'm happy with how I did. I took a lot of notes. However, there are a couple of quests in some of the less popular character paths that don't end as well as I'd like.

Best Decisions

I think that the best decision we made was to have the players be soldiers from the Empire instead of Avernum. It was a complete turnaround in the story from the previous game, and it served to make the environment of the underworld fresh and unique again. This outsider's perspective influenced the entire storyline, and served to make it more interesting.

We also went into Avernum 5 with a fanatical anti-trash philosophy. We were to determined, as much as possible, to make all of the encounters fresh and distinct. I hate repetitive, generic fights in fantasy games. This one has fewer fights, but they are longer and more involved, with lots of scripted events to keep things unpredictable.

Finally, we decided early on to invest the extra time and money to re-introduce elevations to the engine, and to create a lot more character art. These were two common complaints we got about Avernum 4, and improving these areas seems to have made the fans quite happy.

Key Strengths

Avernum 5's greatest strength, I can say with some confidence, is its storyline. From the very first few minutes of play, the game creates an atmosphere of danger and paranoia. The hunt for the assassin is always part of what is going on, and his constant attempts to kill you add a lot of excitement and interest.

I am also very happy with the game's encounter and dungeon design. Avernum 5 has no generic dungeons. There is always something cool going on, and the enemies are unique and unpredictable.

Finally, I think that the game system has reached a level of detail and polish that I am very happy with. The game plays very well. It introduces a battle discipline for warriors and archers, giving them a variety of interesting tactical options. The game system is deep enough to give a lot party building and strategic options, but it's not overwhelmingly complex.

Areas for Improvement

The main thing I plan to improve is the graphical engine. It is simply too old, and it doesn't do enough to take advantage of improvements in computers over the last decade or so.

Our next games will use a new graphics engine that is based on OpenGL. They will still run on older machines, but they will be able to take advantage of the graphical improvements in newer systems. The graphics will still be low-budget, but we can do a lot more.

I also want to revisit some parts of the game system. Each game, I return to the areas that seem most troubling, and redo them. For example, the blessing system is a bit unwieldy. Players are spending a lot of time giving themselves every one in the game, and this leads to a lot of tedium. I will definitely improve this.

Lessons Learned

Avernum 5 did a lot to reinforce my main design rule - figure out what sort of game I want to play, and write that. I have become really impatient with RPGs, both single- and multiplayer, over the last few years, and I was determined to write one that had as few as possible of the elements that annoyed me. One example is repetitive cookie-cutter fights... trash, in other words. I hate battles that only serve to eat up time. I removed as many of those as I could.

I also tried to develop a game that would be fun to write. I figured out the things I enjoyed making the most, and I filled the game with those elements. For example, Avernum has a lot of humor. I like writing funny things. Writing this game was unusually enjoyable, and I think it shows in the final product.