Rethinking the basics

I have been playing Spiderweb software’s game Avernum for the past few weeks. It is a fantastic open world indie RPG. There are a million things I love about it but one particularly handy feature is that your party fully recovers their health and magic point whenever they enter a town. There is no need to visit an inn, which would be the typical way to heal ones party. Actually if you try to get a room in Avernum the innkeeper will always tell you all the rooms are rented out.

As I get older I have gotten a lower tolerance for games wasting my time and this is a perfect example of how an RPG can be streamline to save the player some time. Finding time to get through an epic 50 hour RPG is hard enough, if the developer can shave off some of that time without taking away any actual gameplay it’s much appreciated.