Okay, we all saw this one coming after the last few weeks, but just in case you aren’t up to speed, Spiderweb Software will be releasing their latest on iPad next Thursday. Titled Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, it’s a remake of the second game in the Avernum series of CRPGs, which was itself a remake of the 1996 release Exile 2: Crystal Souls. In anticipation, Spiderweb Software has been putting one of their games on sale each weekend for the last few weeks. With this being the final weekend before the sequel releases, it’s only natural that Avernum: Escape From The Pit ($9.99) should be on sale, and apparently the developer agrees with that because here it is.
Avernum kicks off events that run through the whole series, introducing players to an underground world filled with criminals, dissidents, and troublemakers who have been exiled from the surface by a presumably evil despot. You play as the latest bunch declared guilty and tossed into a pit, never to return. Of course, this being a video game, we shouldn’t ever say ‘never’. Avernum, like Spiderweb’s other games, is an indie take on CRPGs of the early to mid-1990s, albeit with a few modern touches to keep things digestible. That means lots of places to explore, largely non-linear progression, and the ability to pick up almost any object, no matter how useless it may be. It’s a great game with plenty of fans among the TouchArcade staff. Eric Ford wrote our review of the game back in 2012, I recently covered it in the RPG Reload, and if that’s not enough, the two of us put our heads and voices together to discuss it in last month’s RPG Reload Podcast.
Normally selling for $9.99, you can add Avernum: Escape From The Pit to your iPad collection this weekend for just $4.99. If you take a few days off work next week, you might even have it mostly finished by Thursday when the sequel arrives. As with their other games, Avernum goes on sale a few times every year, but it’s never gone under $4.99 and seems unlikely to do so in the future. For that price this game is an absolute steal, so if you’ve got an iPad and like RPGs, you might as well add it to your collection now.
