Avernum 3: Ruined World on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information

Wander free through this epic, indie fantasy adventure. Explore a huge world that evolves as time passes. Towns fight battles. Refugees flee. Disasters happen. Features cunning adventures, great depth, and unlimited freedom. Be a merchant or bounty hunter, buy a home, save the world!

Avernum 3: Ruined World is a rpg, indie and adventure game developed and published by Spiderweb Software.
Released on January 31st 2018 is available in English on Windows and MacOS.

It has received 303 reviews of which 258 were positive and 45 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.9 out of 10. šŸ˜Š

The game is currently priced at 19.50ā‚¬ on Steam.


The Steam community has classified Avernum 3: Ruined World into these genres:

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at Avernum 3: Ruined World through various videos and screenshots.

System requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows
  • OS: Vista or Later
  • Processor: 1.2 GHZ
  • Memory: 512 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 256 MB VRAM
  • Storage: 500 MB available space
MacOS
  • OS: 10.7
  • Processor: 1.2 GHZ
  • Memory: 512 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 256 MB VRAM
  • Storage: 500 MB available space

User reviews & Ratings

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Feb. 2025
30 years and it still works. The formula is still fun.
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Jan. 2025
I spent 66.7 hours playing on the easiest setting. I didn't complete many of the secondary quests and didn't explore many areas. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the main plot and had a great time. Both "Escape from the Pit", and "Chrystal Souls" are games I have played and enjoyed. I am eagerly awaiting the remake of Avernum 4 which I will also play. Well done!
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Aug. 2024
TL; DR The surface at last! It is time to set forth from the darkness and explore a vibrant new world, to acquire the lands that Avernum needs so that its people can thrive, and so that we all might have our day in the sun. Keep in mind that this is a remake of a remake, the original Ruined World released in ā€˜97. Note You can play the Avernum series in any order but if you do not play them in chronological order, you will miss out on the evolving circumstances, such as how we found an exit to the surface in the first place. Since this is a sequel, you should expect some spoilers for the preceding games. Story Avernum is free, but a sunless world cannot sustain a people in perpetuity. At long last it is time to leave the caverns and explore the outside world, no one knows what you might find, so you, the scouting party, are given extensive training... you now know what a tree is, good luck, all our hopes rest on your shoulders, do not screw it up. To truly appreciate Ruined World one needs to have played Crystal Souls and Escape from the Pit , and there is a very simple reason for that. If you play through two entire games set inside the caverns of Avernum, as well as a prologue, it will feel monumental when you actually see the surface again, and you will not get that if you skip the previous titles. You, the player, worked to make this a reality, you discovered an exit, you fought for freedom, and now you will be the first ones out, it feels earned . As for the stories you will find surface-side, well, they are good, Ruined World has a more involved, and intriguing story than its predecessors. It does not quite get into the wonderous writing of the Geneforge series, but it is definitely the best of its trilogy. The surface world is in big trouble, and even if the people can identify you as Avernites, they do not have the energy or the manpower to care. All the guards and soldiers are needed to defend the settlements, but it is not enough, monsters swarm the wilderness, more and more each day, first the outer villages will be destroyed, but the longer they struggle the more people will die, and perhaps, eventually, all human civilisation will be wiped out, unless you interfere. Yet as you make your way through the world, dealing with plague after plague, you are beset with a sense of paranoia, someone created these monsters, and they might very well have been an erstwhile ally of Avernum, perhaps even Archmage Erika herself. Being put in that situation, questioning your allies from the war with the Empire, is gripping, every suspect has a motive, and they have the means. You can never be certain that they are not outright lying to you, do you even share what clues you uncover? They can certainly point you in the right direction, but if they are the perpetratorā€¦ are they just playing you? You start to view them all with suspicion even if some of them genuinely want to help you and this paranoia, paired with the whodunit, and the general ostracization you receive on the surface, makes for a surprisingly engaging story. There are also a lot of jokes, it feels like there are more of them than in the previous games, and you will encounter some of them in the main story. Others are not, like my soulmate, a bear, or the dungeon dedicated to spoofing martial arts movies. Sometimes I found it funny, others it is anti-climactic but in a good way, and at certain points it did not land for me at all. Humour is subjective so your milage will vary. Presentation What if I told you that Ruined World is, in terms of visuals, virtually unchanged from Escape from the Pit , that might be shocking but I assure you that it is the truth. Yet it does not feel like the truth. Ruined World looks very different from the rest of its series simply because you are almost never in the underground, most of the exploration is handled on the surface, and a lot of locations are buildings or monuments above ground, so you see a lot of things you would never encounter in the preceding games. It is a nice change, and it is another aspect you will not properly appreciate if you skip straight to Ruined World . There is also a new title track, very cool. I like this one, it feels like a call to adventure, a real explorersā€™ song, and that is superbly fitting for the gameplay loop. The Avernum series only ever had a handful of art pieces per game, and while Ruined World is not an exception, it does feature far fewer of them than usual. You get the main menu spread, andā€¦ something reused from an ending in Escape from the Pit . It is certainly fitting since we finish what they started, and there are reasons for it, but it is disappointing. Gameplay All Spiderweb Software games play the same sort of way, and the Avernum series is no exception. Avernum focuses on being a sort of sandbox dungeon crawler, you can explore an open world filled with events, towns, handcrafted dungeons and rivers to block your path. It is simple but very entertaining if you are into it. I reused the preceding sentences from my other Avernum reviews, because there are no major changes, and for that reason I will not get into the combat or exploration at any great depth. The most important change in Ruined World is the time limits, I hate time limits and held off on playing it for that singular reason, luckily it is not much of an issue once you actually play the game. You are tasked with solving a number of plagues, the monsters spawn without end, and so you need to put a stop to it. The first and second events are pretty stringent, you can mess them up, and you will see the consequences of your inaction, but they are there to teach you that they are a thing, so that you are aware of the mechanic, and can save the later settlements in a timely fashion. The only way to actually ā€œfailā€ the later events is by wasting week after week on nothing, or by exploring the full world without dealing with the plagues in the order that they are presented, even with that you might be able to save the last few surface-dwellers, because the last few time limits are that lenient . Yet even if all settlements are occupied and each town is destroyed you can still finish the game, so try not to worry about it. Exploring a world with open skies feels far more liberating and free than the caves of Avernum , that is not to say that the previous titles did not feel like free open worlds, but the difference in flavour has an emotional weight to it that makes Ruined World feel more open even when you are navigating through mountain passes or crowded hamlets. It flips the entire series identity back to what it was subverting and that it makes it feel different, it makes the surface feel strange and alien, its freedom and open skies feel exhilarating while the dank caves filled with monsters and darkness feel like home because it is exactly what you are used to. I will restate, Ruined World does what most other RPGs do: Caves are dungeons. Yet you've been in caves for two full games as well as a prologue so it no longer has the connotations you should expect from the genre. It feels like a subversion because of a different context, and a different history. Which is basically why this game clawed its way up the tier list and became my favourite Avernum game, probably.
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Aug. 2024
Brilliant RPG, very interesting lore, lots to explore, simplistic but fun combat, funny, what's not to like?
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April 2024
The Avernum games are excellent, if you are a lover of turn-based RPGs with interesting lore. The 3rd in the series so far seems to be doing the series justice - and it's hilarious that unicorns are pests.
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Steam data 03 April 2025 07:07
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Steam reviews 03 April 2025 09:50

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Avernum 3: Ruined World
7.9
258
45
Online players
9
Developer
Spiderweb Software
Publisher
Spiderweb Software
Release 31 Jan 2018
Platforms