Yes I love these games, but I find it very unfortunate that he doesn't make sure that these games offer several languages.

I'm sure the community would be happy to translate its games into several languages, after all there are many independent games on Steam that offer multi-language, most of which are created by the community.

In short, I am tired of reading only English every time! I would love to enjoy its games in my native language, because right now I do not fully enjoy its games, reading the many descriptions does not bother me on the contrary, but in English no.

It does seem like it would be pretty easy for him to allow the community to help since there is no voice acting in all his games, only text.

I saw a relating post in Steam once. Jeff commented that it is the issue from the engine, which makes localization not possible. Unless Jeff makes the engine's source code as public, I do not think there will be different languages from Avernum series (1-3).

back to post, I do agree that Jeff Vogel is "the greatest developer" after watching his GDC talk. Considering his circumstances, he is an old school Chad in Indie Game Development.

I fucking love spiderweb's games.

Why would he translate for other languages if there is no demand in that market? His games are targeted toward a niche, english-speaking market. It would be cool if there were international demand for his wonderful games, but it is what it is.

A niche market? I don't think that prevents him from translating his games since there are several Indy games that have multi-lingual text so why not him? I mean what's really preventing him from doing that?

Otherwise, if he can't afford it, and I can understand that, he may very well ask for help from the community.

If he still has the sources of his remakes on Avernum it's feasible.

I take the example of the Steam Workshop, there are many games that have been translated via the community so why doesn't he do that ? I love his games but reading text only in English no thanks... for my part I think it spoils a bit the fun and understanding of the stories.

So ponder this: I've made an entire game engine with internal logic entirely from the ground up. What do you think the chances are of everything being translatable and still working after you've gone though this unique game's code?

I just started playing these games 2 months ago and I'm totally addicted. These are awesome and sadly unknown before greater audiences.

I don't get it. The game is an endless loop of dying, and super frustrating "fights" where sliths one-shot kill my party members despite my priest repeating the same boring heal spell hundreds of times until he is killed, and then the run back to town so party members can spring back to life. The endless missing and gigantic hitpoint sponges the sliths make this game torture. I need between 300 and 500 attack attempts by my party to kill one slith if it doesn't kill off my party first.

Almost always we have to run after 2 or 3 party members are killed and the sliths are still wondering when the fight will begin. The hit chance for both weapons and magic is about 5% so it is torture to endlessly repeat the same attack-miss combo for ages while the priest repeats the same heal spell hundreds of times over & over & over until he is killed or has to run cause he is the last one alive and I need him to drag the dead back to town. Was this game ever play-tested? Why give make the sliths such huge hitpoint sponges that can dodge 95% or more of all attacks and one-shot kill the player in return? Is that really fun?

level make a huge difference. For every level difference they are higher than you then you miss 5% more and hit less hard. They hit more often and hit harder. When you see what you are seeing it means go elsewhere and do other stuff.

I happen to dislike this sort of mechanic, as it makes level have too much of an impact, resulting in things being either too hard or too easy, just depending on relative levels.

In fact, I would say this is the main reason why Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth ended up being such a terrible game. If you try to play the game as intended, it ends up being frustratingly difficult, while if you solo the game so that your one character gets more XP, you end up out-leveling the enemies and the game becomes trivial.

Level should not make that much of an impact.

(Note that I haven't actually played the game I mentioned.)

Wizardry 8 also did the same thing although due to level scaling it is less of an issue. So I'd say level scaling with a mechanic where hit rates and damage scale with level difference works okay, in a game like Avernum it is just a mechanic to let players know to come back later without actually making it so you can't reach the area until you hit certain thresholds. In later games Jeff does cut off areas that you can't reach until certain chapters so he did learn from what he did. I guess that is a sign of good game designer.

Except that I don't remember Avernum 1 having this mechanic.

For a non-linear game, I prefer level to not make too much of a difference. Dragon Wars, for example, is a game that handled this better (though equipment ends up being a big deal here).

Even in a linear game, having level not make too much of a difference definitely helps, especially for those who like to do challenge runs. For example, Final Fantasy 5 can be completed with everyone below level 5, mainly because the mechanics allow it. In FF5, as an example:
* Level does not affect hit rate. It does affect the damage multiplier, but since that's applied after defense, your level doesn't affect whether you can damage high defense enemies.
* Level doesn't affect what abilities you have access to, though it does affect MP (so high level spells might be too expensive to actually cast later on).
* There are actually ways to temporarily boost a character's level, in order to do decent damage at a low (real) level. There are also ways of doing level-independent damage (one spell always does 1,000 damage, though it might be too expensive to cast), and of producing powerful magic effects early (like breaking rods).
* Enemy attacks tend to be single target, something you can be immune to, or something that does damage as a percentage of max HP, making them survivable at low levels. (And even then, there's Hide and Jump to avoid attacks entirely.)

I much prefer this approach to how games like Hoshigami and many Ys games handle it, where one level can make a huge difference.

I am okay with monsters in different levels of areas. I made it through Wizardry 8 no problem.
Baldur's Gate 2 was a good game with no level scaling nonsense like in modern games that make them yucky.

In this Avernum escape from pit game, I barely did the first quest on my second try to clear out a basement where some rat chanter mage was burning my party down with fireballs. That was painful and a healing and rotation nightmare to barely win it on my second attempt. They told me to go to another town so I did and was told I needed a boat to go rescue some captured people in a tower. That was where I quit after 5 tries of going into the tower and either getting wiped out or losing 2 or 3 party members while escaping in terror. One enemy slith party lost 3 out of 4 sliths over several attempts of us attacking, but the final thunder Chad mage was completely invulnerable and could not be damaged while he burned down my party with fireballs. We resurrected 2 dead party members back in town and returned one more time and the mage had spawned back his 3 teammates who insta-killed 2 of my characters before we could blink so I quit. It was utter torture. This game is just as nasty as Battle Brothers for killing off the player party at the start of the game.

I admit I did like many aspects of this Avernum game which is I am new to: the graphics, characters, items, towns and NPCs were all pleasing. Just the combat is designed to torture the player and make us quit out and find a better game to play.