Really looking forward to the release.

DId you ever play the original Exile and sequels? Some of us who did hated the change to isometric (that shows less of the world onscreen) and the change from a a 6-member party to a 4-member one. However, Spiderweb has tried different things. Geneforge was all about summoning, whereas Exile was about the party. The settings also vary widely.

Well, except the engine still looks the same. When I first checked out the news page, I guessed that it was a Spiderweb game and I was right. And I shouldn't be right, if it was meant to be a much newer look.

I wonder why Spiderweb can't take the graphics up a notch, similar to something like Balrum perhaps?

The part with fortress building and perhaps some way to make an impact on the world made me curious but i wasnt sure to make out of it. Il have to look it up on some video i guess.
But it woud be nice with a new rpg game with some elements of tactics/strategy.
Something like Fire emblem but on Pc woud be awesome.

And about the graphics.
I can actually see an improvment In this Game out from the screenshots alone over at least one of the earlier games
Avernum: The Complete Saga
Stuff doesnt quite look as smudged out now and i can i actually see individual Bricks on the wall in one of the Rooms in the screenshots of the new game.

Backed this and looking forward to it. Shame they never get GOGchievements but the games already have ingame built in achievements and challenge objectives.

Will see how the base building mechanics pan out.

"Cheap" is one way to look at it, but he describes his overall approach from a tiny business perspective to the audience at a Game Developer's Conference, if anyone is curious about either him and his games, or about how a tiny game dev can even survive over the years:

"Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way"

"In this GDC 2018 talk, Spiderweb Software's Jeff Vogel presents a retrospective on his company's history and how they've managed to stay in the game-making business since 1994. "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs

Related is another GDC video, which at first I misremembered as being by Vogel, but actually this one is by Jake Birkett, a similar tiny gamedev with a GDC video on the same topic (while googling I see one of them has left at least one comment on the other's blog, so they seem to know about each other):

"How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit", published by GDC Nov 20 2016.

"In this 2016 GDC Talk, Grey Alien Games' Jake Birkett explains how to survive as an independent game developer without having a single hit game. "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmwbYl6f11c

...none of which will change anyone's mind about whether to buy a particular game, and lots of gamers don't care about the business side of games, but I thought they were both interesting, and kind of answered some questions that have been in the back of my mind for years.

Despite disliking the graphics, I am somewhat intrigued this time.

Taking that at face value, GPU programming is very complex and difficult for programmers compared with, say, merely learning a new computer language. That's an explanation, not an excuse or a justification. As you like, but new games *do* come out with low requirements. Here's a few 5 years old or less, for what it's worth:

Sanctuary RPG: Black Edition 2015 BlackShellGames -- 512mb, "Toaster compatible"
This one's a special case, it uses ASCII character graphics, which is
very retro indeed. Also very light on CPU demands.

Kathy Rain 2016 353mb Clifftop Games -- 300mhz 128mb

Technobabylon 2015 1gb Wadjet Eye Games -- 700mhz 64mb

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy 2017 749mb THQ-Nordic -- 1.5ghz 1gb (needs SSE2 instructions, which came out something like 2010..2012...I forget)

Battlevoid: Harbinger 2016 113mb Bugbyte Ltd -- 1.8ghz 1gb

Shardlight 2016 2gb Wadjet Eye Games -- 700mhz 64mb

Distant Worlds: Universe 2014 1.1gb Slitherine Ltd -- 1.5ghz 1gb

Blackwell Epiphany (#5 in the series) 2014 350mb Wadjet Eye Games -- 700mhz 64mb

FoxTail 2018 100mb Gingertips Game Studio -- 800mhz 128mb
(SVGA graphics)

The 7th Guest: 25th Anniversary Edition 2019 Trilobyte/MojoTouch - 1.8ghz 1gb
Maybe that doesn't count, since it's a re-release

Train Valley 2016 Alexey Davydov et al 185mb -- 1.7ghz 2gb

Edit: thanks to rjbuffchix: Driftmoon 2013 134mb Instant Kingdom -- 1.7ghz 1gb

P.S. Sorry for any typos or changes to store pages since I copy pasted the above. BTW these are just games I own; I'm not pretending to have a database for all gog games.

Enjoyed your earlier post re: a small developer surviving in the game business.

I'd like to add Driftmoon to your list here, a little older than you were going but I think it fits.

Thanks for both comments!

Driftmoon 2013 134mb Instant Kingdom -- 1.7ghz 1gb

Such as all of the Spiderweb games, despite the frankly bizarre claim in the post you're responding to. Here's Avadon 3 from 2016 (see attachment), which generally makes my 4GHz i7 run at 1GHz or so. In no way does it "eat" a quad-core CPU, seeing as how it's using about 5% of mine, which is barely above idling. The requirements are a 800MHz CPU and 512MB RAM, which is being conservative, and are just the OS requirements anyway. There would be no benefit to spending any dev time offloading anything to the GPU, not that there's much that could realistically be offloaded in this case.

Also backed this on KS, and I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the game. While this is definitely a niche game for a niche audience, for me, it's the story and world that have kept me coming back time and again to Vogel's games. He knows what his core strengths are as a game creator, and he plays to those. Perhaps what is even more important is that he knows what his limitations are as a game creator, and he plays to those too. That's something a lot of AAA development studios could learn from.

For me, the biggest shift between Geneforge and Exile/Avernum was the moral ambiguity. In the latter, you could either side pretty well, but in the former, the extremely hazy lines between "good" and "evil" in Geneforge meant that playing both sides was important, or even necessary to attain power.

Then there's Avadon, which emphasized more of a lone wolf approach to combat.

Cheap? The guy is only one man who lives with his family. Artists, especially good ones aren't cheap.

Hmm. Colour me idiot, but when I see "Spiderweb" this means I'm going to buy game, and, most likely, on many platforms, starting with GoG and Steam. Yes, I'm that stupid.

His games are similar, somewhat, some are remasters, but as he said himself, he sells amusement. And, unlike games from some big companies (whose names, ironically, starts with "B"), his games always provided said amusement.

IIRC he never went that "play it our way" policy some developers "offer" (basically they make it mandatory), it is all about having fun. For this alone he deserves my money far more than many of those "triple eh" studios.

There are very few developers left who use this degree of "trust" from me, so I'll value each and every one of them.