Do you ever miss the OLD Days of computer gaming. How about finding hidden cities on Ultima 2 or 3? Searching caves for loot in Dragon Warrior? How about some of those old 8 and 16 bit D&D games that were released on the old consoles and played like Story Rich campaigns? Well, I found this cool little game that's actually a re-make of a older series by the same people. Remember the old "Exile" games? They were these RPG's but the graphics were kind of "stick-figureish". Here's a pic of the old "Exile" game below.

These games are made by a very small Indie company called "Spiderweb Software". Over the years they remade the Exile series and called them "Avernum". They are same games story wise as the Exile games, but with updated graphics and functionality. The graphics are on par with Ultima Online, so if you can stand playing something like that today, you're in for a real treat.

I've been playing Avernum 6 for the last few nights as Sup Com 2 doesn't have the draw the first one seemed to have on me. The world of Avernum 6 is MASSIVE. By making a game using these old school graphics they were really able to concentrate on Content and details. You can pick up anything that isn't nailed down, you can rob people, you can go on a murderous rampage and try to kill everyone you meet, you have complete freedom to do whatever you want. I wouldn't recommend doing all those though as the guards will lay the smack down on you in town if you break the law too much. After you make past the initial quests the game gradually makes more details available to you, like the fact that you have to eat and now have to start carrying food on you.

There are literally HUNDREDS of Quests to complete in this game. There are mysteries to solve, powerful magical items to find, NPC's galore to interact with, you name it. I haven't found any mounts of any kind though, haven't even seen any, so don't expect to get a horse, but aside from that every detail is in the gameplay mechanics. Building a character has a ton of your standard "D&D type" options. STR, DEX, INT, etc etc and you have abilities and racial proficiencies, etc etc. It's a very deep yet simple system. Here's a screen from Avernum 6.

It really is fun and entertaining, just don't get hung up on it not being the top of the line graphics. As for length of gameplay, if you play this from start to finish, do all the side quests, and explore the entire world, you're looking at 200 hours of gameplay or More. It also has that appeal of "whats in that unexplored cave?" and "where can I learn some really powerful spells?" that all those old school games we used to play have.

You can actually download the whole game for free but it only functions as a "Demo" with the first 10% of the game unlocked unless you buy a "key" to register the game. It's about $25 and if you ask me it's Well Worth it especially since the money goes to help a little Indie company.

The next time you're looking at Impulse or Steam or whatever and want to buy a new cheap game to keep you busy for the weekend, try Avernum 6. Like I said you can download it for free Here and try the Demo, then decide  if you want to buy it. If you want something new that's still old school, this is it.