The developer said there's a game-breaking bug and he can't patch it on gog, only on Steam: "Unfortunately, no. The patch was actually ready and I've uploaded it to Steam. I was about to get ready to bring the fix to GOG as well, but the creators of the SunBurn engine have suddenly stopped supporting their engine and have shut down their activation servers. This means I can no longer validate my SunBurn Studio license and therefore, cannot ever build the patch. The code is there, the fix is ready, but I can't make an EXE file out of it to upload to GOG. I even tried contacting the former SunBurn devs, but they never got back to me :/ This is very unfortunate as the bug itself is a rather big one and it causes the game to slow down over time (and it eventually crashes as well)."
This is a great deal for the series. This review is to note that some of them are being remade and improved, and these are the originals. I'm not sure how many will be redone, but Avernum 1 is already out, and Avernum 2 is coming. So, you might be re-buying the remakes. At least it shouldn't be a surprise for buyers to get these and then find there are some remade versions.
I don't quite agree with other reviews on the length and challenge of the game. I've played for some hours, and have found solving both some main (first solution) and second (alternate solutions) puzzles not easy - some aren't finished - and I haven't finished the game. I think it has some nice challenge and length. The game has a creative design: there are these Russian dolls. Some are 'named' and help with the puzzles. You walk around and can play dolls you see, and 'stack' dolls one size larger so you're playing 5 dolls, of 5 sizes. The game is basically a puzzle game with atmosphere. For example, you find yourself on a cruise ship, with rooms such as the kitchen, where you need to solve puzzles, not classic puzzles but puzzles such as which doll to play and go to the right location. It has the same pro and con of Double Fine's Costume Quest, of having some simple and what can be tedious gameplay - you've checked the area dozens of times, check more - yes still play that grabs you and pulls you in. I'd say the reasons to play it are unique design, fun to explore, nice puzzles; the reasons not to are if you just don't care for the simple gameplay and repition of a lot of trying to find things. One note on gog.com's pricing - if I'm not wrong, $14.99 is the original game price and gog.com is selling it for that same price long after it's a new game; and it's been on sale for a fraction of that repeatedly. It seems too high now. It'd be easier to recommend at $10 or less, but will be worth the $15 to some players.
