the_bard: Has anyone played
Avernum?
I'm considering picking the promo bundle up on Steam. Looks alright.
Spiderweb Software's games are shareware so pretty much every single one of them has a trial mode/version.
My experience with SW in general is that the interface is meh (even their recent Avadon's interface is kinda crap) and you'll have a lot of walking. The original old Exile games used a separate mode for battles, that put them in separate space (Ultima 3 clone), while in exploration mode your party occupied just a single tile and quickly got around huge tiles. In Avernum and later the battles play in the same space as exploration, and since the developer is allergic to parties blocking off passages completely, every single area is huge. Any shed feels like a hangar, a single-person prison cell is a royal suite. And you'll have to walk across this stuff and hallways all the time.
Mind, the reckless slaying of monsters for XP and occasional dungeon puzzle are fun, if you don't need much story for amusement. The games in that series tend to be more on the free-roam side.