Spiderweb Games

[ttomm46]

Hi
It seems up to now that avernum and the Geneforge games by spiderweb have been about the king of indie games..how would you all rate thosegames to Eschalon book 1 for fun and playability?

I personally think Eschalon is a lot more fun and I'm an old (62) year old jaded gamer
Tom

[revvie]

In terms of fun and playability id have to rate Eschalon book 1 as the better one.Ive played many of the spiderweb games and to be honest found them rather boring after a couple of hours playing.Eschalon Book 1 has imho better graphics,they are pleasing to look at,the music is rather nice(to me anyway) and the combat is better overall.
If you want a game to play for just an hour,then the geneforge or avernum series are ok for that.If on the other hand you want a game that pulls you in from the start then obviously choose Eschalon Book 1.
Well thats my two pence worth,or two cents if your American

[Dragonlady]

Speaking of Avernum, I got an email newsletter from Spiderweb announcing that they now have Avernum 5 for the PC for you to buy/download.

[ttomm46]

I got Nethergate resurrection and when you open inventory all the party characters are represented by a picture of the same Celt....A tiny bit of work would have cured that so now you have male avatars representing women too...seems the game was rushed...

[zanderohm]

I rather enjoy Spiderweb's stuff in general... Eschalon is a better game in many ways, but the Avernum stuff is fun to play and the games are pretty large. They might not be everyone's cup o' tea, but I'd recommend them to anyone and you can always check out how you like the game with a demo download.

[Randomizer]

Spiderweb games are usually about mood and the large world to explore. If you want graphics or music you came to the wrong place since these go at the bottom of the list for things that get upgraded. Since almost all of the games are written by Jeff Vogel he concentrates on an interesting plot and plenty of things to do while exploring the world.

I like them better than Eschalon, but I haven't gotten that far into the world.

[kenhwcan]

The nice thing about A5 is that it is a four person party based game. Paying both E1 and A5 graphics are about the same but if you like party based games go for it.

[GianMarco]

I loved the Geneforge series - especially part 4.
Despite not being very great to look at, Jeff's games defiantly make up for it in the storytelling department - thats what kept me playing. Not to mention the combat system in his games are very well balanced to.

I think Basilisk can learn a lot from Spiderweb in many ways.
However, I am very pleased with the way Eschalon turned out regardless. For their first attempt at an RPG I think Basilisk has done a kick ass job.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Thanks GianMarco. One of the things that Spiderweb has going for them is many years of experience and solid storyline to work off of. Book II will also benefit from having an established world and developing storyline to work from, not to mention the experience of what we did right and wrong on the first game.

Speaking of first games, what was Spiderweb's very first release?

[Randomizer]

I think the first game was Exile 1: Escape from the Pit. The Avernum series is a remake and updated engine for the Exile Series.

[binger]

I tried to get into the Spiderweb games several times, but it's obviously not a strong match for me. One thing I did like, however, was the keyboard controls - playing without a mouse was rarely this smooth and fun.

[Feidb]

Tried the demo of Avernum 5 and am ready to delete it. Not my thing.

Just for a hoot, I picked up Gothic 3 and installed a huge amount of bug fixes before I started playing. It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

Feidb

[Saxon1974]

I would imagine Gothic 3 would be pretty stable by now. The combat however, is what made it unplayable for me. If you left click stun an enemy you can just do that over and over again and kill any enemy regardless of how tough they are. I have yet to see a combat improvement patch.

[BenS]

I'm a big fan of the SW games, having played all of them since the original Nethergate. I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of why I like them, as that's a matter of taste, but I love huge, exploration-type RPGs. Turn-based, preferably.

One thing I will point out for any fence-sitters, though. Replayability. I know a lot of people have replayed Eschalon, but the reason I didn't--as much as I enjoyed it!--was b/c while the character would obviously have been created and developed differently, the story wouldn't have. I already know the story, and for me, that's little incentive to replay a game.

Not so much for the Avernum games, but the Geneforge games have great replayability. Not only do you have a number of very meaningful class distinctions, but based on faction and moral choices, you end up w/ very meaningful differences running through a game.

And if you're not aware of it, the fact that you can play through Nethergate (the original or the, to my mind, improved newer version) as either a Celt or Roman and have quite different experiences throughout was worth its weight in gold.

And Avernum 5 really raised the bar, w/ some extremely memorable, optional boss fights & quests, and scripted events.

As BW said, though, SW games have years of experience behind them to work w/. I have every confidence the Eschalon and related games will continue to improve on what has started off as a very solid, fun foundation!

[Evnissyen]

Well, Geneforge 5: Overthrow has just recently been announced, and is slated for release late this year for Mac, a little later for PC. Take a look at all three screenshots and you'll see that the graphics have definitely improved (according to Jeff Vogel he's been putting much concentration into them), although they are still not nearly as pretty as Eschalon's and unfortunately still retain much of the flat-looking graphics of the earlier games.

I think Eschalon is off to a nice start, as far as graphics and ease of gameplay go. I'm one of those people who groan at elaborate cinematics and cannot stand tricky camera options -- especially when all of this stuff gets in the way of the story.

SW's strength, as others have said, is in the storyline and the backstories that you learn as you progress from game to game. I've also been arguing on the SW boards that Jeff should start elaborating more on the characters in his game -- especially with the Avernum series which is just a little scantier -- or perhaps just a little less original -- than the Geneforge series in plot and storyline -- as well as the verisimilitude of the gameplay (in the case of both games). I won't bother going into all of that here (I actually see the same problems with Eschalon)... I'll just say that my argument has continually been that if you're going to make "retro" games then you should concentrate very heavily on character and story . . . because that, I think, is really what separates this sort of game from the flashy stuff that makes many of us just a little nauseous.