No matter what type of Role-Playing Game (RPG) you are playing, you can be 95% sure it involves killing things. Many so called RPGs provide no gameplay beyond hacking away and leaving swaths of dead monsters, sans any material possessions, and others might allow you to avoid combat situations altogether. However regardless of design philosophies, combat usually comprises the core gameplay, and so it's essential that it is well thought out and executed, but more importantly it has to be enjoyable and challenging for the player.​

When I sat down to write about RPG development, I went through the list of things I like to see in an RPG. Depth of characterization and plot. Reactivity of the world. Believable NPCs. Feeling like you?re playing a ?role?. Then I tried to decide which is the most important in RPG development ? and the answer is none of them.​

"1. Could you tell us a little about yourself, your role at Zero-Sum, and your involvement in the development of Prelude to Darkness?

Travis Williams: My background is pretty diverse: I've spent a lot of my professional life in academic research (cognitive psychology), freelance graphic design and illustration, and playing music. My work at Zero Sum represents my first serious foray into the world of video game creation."​

Probably the first thing you'll notice when you fire up Avernum 3 is that it's not the most modern CRPG out there. It doesn't have a lot of automation about it. It doesn't have the latest graphics to push your several hundred dollar graphics card. It doesn't have fast paced, passive combat that you spend most of your time watching. It doesn't make the claim that there are 300+ spells. It, frankly, doesn't have a lot of the hooks that modern CRPGs use to sucker you in to buying them.

That's not a bad thing at all, because what it does offer is a challenging and rewarding experience in the tradition of the older CRPGs. If you're looking for an old school CRPG fix, similar to Ultima, Wasteland, or the old Gold Box games, that's what Avernum 3 offers. It's a straight shooting, party based CRPG that involves a lot of quests, a lot of locations to save, or not save, interesting combat, and more.​

11.) Skills, particularly combat ones, offer more benefits when they get to certain levels. Can you give us an example of what types of rewards players can expect to see by reaching high skill levels in a combat skill? How about a non-combat skill?

Mat Williams: Non-combat skills primarily give attribute bonuses as they get better. We had a lot of other, more active, bonuses in place for them, but it got to be too much of a testing and balancing headache for us. I'd like to get more bonuses in for them, right now I don't think there's any non-combat bonus which compares to the advanced sword-spin attack. All the advanced combat moves are very useful, even key in the late game, and they're different enough to warrant playing with more than just swords.​

11.) Timed events play a big part in Avernum 3, such as the razing of towns by monsters if you don't get to their nests in time, and quest situations that only occur after certain dates. Can you explain why Avernum 3 does this? Is making a dynamically changing world more difficult versus the added benefit of demonstrating urgency of situations? Do you feel this worked well for Avernum 3?

It's the thing I love most about the game. I love the size, the depth, the amount of stuff in it. And I love the way you can return to a town and find half of it smashed in.

It was a lot of work. But I think it was just cool.​