Spiderweb Software’s Avernum series has a really interesting history. The first three games in the Avernum series are based on the first three games in the Exile series, also by Spiderweb, that were released in the mid-90s. The first Avernum and its sequel were originally released in 2000 with Avernum 3 arriving in 2002. Then, in 2011, Spiderweb decided to reboot and remake that original trilogy of Avernum games with a new game engine and expanded features. The first fruit of that endeavor was Avernum: Escape from the Pit ($9.99), which gets its subtitle from the 1995 game Exile: Escape from the Pit. See how all this stuff comes full circle? It’s pretty neat. Following that was Avernum 2: Crystal Souls ($9.99) in 2015, which again takes its title from the Exile sequel Exile II: Crystal Souls. Now Spiderweb has gone and announced the final game in this rebooted trilogy, Avernum 3: Ruined World and–you guessed it!–it derives its name from the third Exile game Exile III: Ruined World. Check out the awesome trailer.
Alongside the announcement of Avernum 3: Ruined World for release on Mac and Windows, an iPad version is also in the works. This is especially exciting news as not only do Spiderweb’s brand of expansive, complex, and decidedly old-school RPGs translate extremely well to the iPad, but you might also remember that back in the spring of 2015 Spiderweb nearly dropped making games for the iPad at all due to an issue with Apple’s iOS software at that time. Thankfully the one man studio was able to work out those issues and launch Avernum 2: Crystal Souls on iPad as planned. Now we are getting the third game on iPad too, and since there aren’t a whole lot of developers dedicating time to making RPGs like this anymore I’m quite thankful for that. The plan right now is to launch Avernum 3: Ruined World on Mac and Windows in the first quarter of 2018 with the iPad version coming sometime after. We’ll let you know when more specific details on the iPad release are revealed.
