Avernum 4: Greed and Glory is making great progress:

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory Kickstarter, February Update #4

Greetings from Spiderweb Software! We are still making excellent progress on Avernum 4: Greed and Glory. An October release is the current plan. We have a few small updates and a nice piece of art to share with you!

The World Is Half Done

We just got halfway through remaking the old world, and we played a bunch of it to make sure the game works and is fun. (It does and is.) For fans of the original Avernum 4, we just finished the mad, paranoid city of Almaria, which is kind of the hinge for the whole game world and story.

The new Avernum 4 really feels a lot more like a real place. We have packed all the caves and passages with detail. Fungal forests. Hidden tunnels. Strange workshops. Wineries. Mines, active and abandoned. We added a lot of different sorts of terrain, and we're using them to create a fascinating, alien world to explore (and get lost in). Different regions get different looks, furniture, and flora.

I honestly think Avernum feels more like a real place now than ever.

Now that we know which areas feel more and less developed, we can start putting in user-made content. Which reminds me ...

The Deadline Approaches

If you backed at a level where you can add user-made content, remember that the deadline is the end of March. Happily, we have heard from most backers now. There's a still a lot of people at the less expensive levels who haven't chipped in, though.

What does the deadline mean? Most importantly, this is when we start actually implementing peoples' ideas. Right now, if you add details or make changes, we can handle that. Once your contribution has actually been written and tested, however, we become far less able to make changes. (I am very happy to code your quest once. I really don't want to do it twice.)

So if you sent the outline of something but forgot to add the details, consider doing that. If not, I will take your idea and do all I can to turn it into something people enjoy playing.

The Other Awards

We are working on all the other goodies for backers now. We usually get really serious about it about five months before release, so June or so. If you are waiting for merch, don't worry. It's happening.

New Avernum 4 Art

We're very happy to say that our long time collaborator Ben Resnick is working on Avernum 4. He's already made a great interface and logo. He has also made a detailed world map, attached to this update. More art is on the way, and we're always thrilled with what he makes.

I haven't said much about the new human art yet. That's because we were working on finding an artist and designing the new icons. Now we can say that Remos Turcuman, a skilled icon-maker who has been working with us for some years now, is completely redoing the human art. It's a modular system that will allow us to do a lot of really cool stuff.

We're really excited about the new system, and we hope to have something to show you soon. Thanks so much to everyone who supported us in making this new system.

And that's all for February. Back to work, and you'll hear more from us soon!

- Jeff Vogel

Thanks Couchpotato!

Spiderweb Software announced a Kickstarter campaign for the remake Avernum 4: Greed and Glory:

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory

Avernum 4: Greed and Glory will be an epic, indie, turn-based fantasy role-playing adventure for Windows, Mac, and iPad. It continues the saga of Avernum, a nation in caverns far under the world, full of misfits, adventures, treasures to be found, and monsters to hunt (and that hunt you).

It will be a remaster of the indie RPG cult-classic Avernum 4, which came out way back in 2005. The original is a massive RPG, full of skilled warriors and wizards using a multitude of weapons, spells, and artifacts to conquer an enormous world. It is old and doesn't run well anymore. We will completely rework everything to make a great, modern game.

Thanks Couchpotato!