Avencast: Rise of the Mage on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Play Avencast, the epic roguelike action-RPG with tons of combat moves, spells, and equipment. Fight against evil forces to save your academy and vanquish the darkness. As you progress, learn powerful spells and combos to increase your chances of victory.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is a action roguelike, hack and slash and action rpg game
developed by ClockStone
and published by .
Released on March 17th 2010 is available only on Windows
in 3 languages: English, German and French.
It has received 707 reviews of which 490 were positive and 217 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.7 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 4.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 2.04€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Avencast: Rise of the Mage into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Avencast: Rise of the Mage 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 *: Windows XP/Vista/7
- Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Pentium or 2200+ AMD Athlon processor
- Memory: 512 MB (1GB Vista)
- Hard Drive: 4.4 GB of free space
- Graphics: GeForce FX 5700 or better / ATI Radeon 9700 or better
- Sound: DirectSound compatible
- DirectX®: 9.0c
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Can be brutal at times, and a bit samey in places but good fun all round. A 70/100 effort. The good Patched to work on modern OSes and computers Spells are good Lots of weapon, spell and clothing/armour upgrades Story is pretty good too Action comes thick and fast Puzzles are clever The bad Some backtracking involved Fighting the same mobs gets old, especially toward end game Side quests are ho-hum
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Avencast: Rise of the Mage is an ARPG from 2007 that feels and looks quite old-school. The game comes from a small dev team without much experience, but it's full of creative touches. While not perfect, it's better than many people realize. It uses WASD controls instead of the typical point-and-click style, with a top-down view and various movement and camera settings that take time to get used to. I initially experienced crashes after the intro, but setting anisotropic filtering to linear fixed the issue. Some players recommend disabling cutscenes, though I didn’t want to miss the story. You play as a young mage apprentice sent to the Academy of Avencast to complete your studies in magic. The story is fairly cliché but interesting enough to keep you engaged. The voice acting is decent, though the quality of the dialogue is mixed. Some lines work, while others feel a bit clunky. The story is also told through charming storybook cutscenes, which adds a nice touch. The game features two main schools of magic: blood magic, which is melee-focused, and soul magic, which focuses on ranged attacks. The summoning school is split between blood and soul magic, so it doesn’t really count as its own school. Casting spells is done either through hotkeys (F1–F4) or by using a unique system of movement combinations and mouse clicks. While there’s a wide variety of spells, the more powerful combat spells often fall short, as enemies can easily dodge them. These spells also take too long to cast and consume too much mana, making them impractical/worthless for most combat situations. In contrast, AoE spells are much more reliable due to their lower mana costs and ability to hit multiple targets. Skill points, earned by defeating enemies or completing quests, allow you to learn new spells or improve your attributes. Combat is hit-or-miss. Movement feels slow and cumbersome, and mastering the dodge roll takes time. Entering rooms can be frustrating, as you often have to step in far enough for the walls and ceiling to disappear, making enemies hard to see at first. The environments feel repetitive, with a muted color palette and little variety. Every area, especially the academy, feels too large and looks almost identical, making exploration tedious after a while. Despite these issues, the game surprises with its quests. They’re not all typical fetch quests—there is a refreshing variety, including some with unique gameplay elements, which keeps things interesting. The puzzles throughout the game also add an unexpected layer of challenge, which helps break up the combat-heavy sections. That said, the boss fights are tedious, and enemies later in the game become bullet sponges. The final levels are packed with traps, making combat overwhelming at times, as you juggle dodging tough enemies and avoiding magic trap attacks. I also wish the later levels had more open areas—navigating tight corridors with a camera that frequently gets stuck on walls is frustrating.
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This game was so peak. And i may just be biased since i was very addicted to it for around decade ago with a physical copy of the game that was lost. To this day i can never forget the seminar rooms ost... It's still probably is my favourite spellcasting game even though there aren't that large variety of spells except upgrading them to a better one... And spin to win cyclone is still the best way to play the game, or soul meteor if you're going for soul magic route... or just go both if you could accept enemy hp sponges for a little more fun. Cleared the game on hard and i cant remember how much times i got one shotted from wolgaths and floor traps... especially floor traps but the difficulty is on point and you just have to use summoning as bait and spam magic shield and rolls to win the hard fights. The only thing that bothered me to this day is gear rarity and modifiers felt kind of underwhelming, it definitely has the arpg formula like titan quest but man, some normal gears can be better than epic gears, and the one with better mods are cheaper than the weaker one... and how does mana regen mod is rarer than blood/soul magic mods? I think the story is also good, i won't go much further into details but the high fantasy atmosphere of this world is a breath of fresh air and felt neither generic or overrated, atleast in my opinion. You get the lore of the academy of Avencast and some of the background of other realms especially your character's birthplace and that's all i care, i don't want another 30 volumes of lores brainstorming and shoving into my face. Let those be for a prequel or spin-off that i wished to happen one day snorts copium. There are actually quite few bugs that i encountered this time around which i swear i did not had any bugs from the previous times i played this game for many times. Most common is script popup bugs but its not game breaking, and the second is visual bug where anything else except the floor turned black, but it only happened once in the museum area and it was permanently gone a few seconds after. The first time i tried to run the game i had DX9 error which only happened once and was never seen again. I could just assume these issues probably had to do with compability with modern hardware or os or steam port but when it comes to these issues im not knowledgeable enough to provide a definite solution. I wouldn't raise the bar and call this game a masterpiece, something is definitely felt lacking with the game... but i still loved it just like i did years ago. Make a prequel already god fucking dammit!
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TLDR: Not quite a hack n slash, not quite Diablo, not quite an RPG, but you level up to get cooler spells and fight bigger baddies traveling through pretty neat looking areas. Its 5 bucks on Steam, there's no way I can say it isn't worth that and more. SAVE OFTEN though, cuz you may crash (or die) often and the auto save is seldom. (Mostly) spoiler free review. Avencast is a simple little game that offers not very much, but does what it offers well enough. The basis of the game is, you use keystrokes to cast spells (Blood Magic for Melee, or Soul Magic for ranged), and you level up to get new, cooler spells. An idea they mess with is instead of pressing a key to cast fireball, you would press a movement key, another movement key, and then right click for it. Seems kinda cool, right? And it is... to an extent. The thing about that is, you can also just... keybind like you would any other game. You can just press a key to cast fireball, and eschew all the movement gimmicks for casting spells. Which feels like it may take away from the core identity of the game and make it more mundane, but once you get into it, you'll definitely want to be able to just press a key to receive a spell. I spent my whole playthrough as a Soul Mage, using only ranged spells. I would snipe enemies that were unaware, and then have to kite them around to avoid taking damage while blasting 'em with various ranged spells. Many enemies in this game will bum-rush you, and luckily you have both a quickstep and a roll to avoid them. No stamina bar though, so you don't really ever need to pace your dodges. You just have to make few mistakes; even a hit or two could take out half your health bar. Just as many enemies in the game will sit back and shoot projectiles at you, so a crowded room quickly becomes a bullet hell, with you running between melee attackers and bolts of magic, weaving spells between dodges. Movement felt good, and collision on objects in rooms felt well made; my only complaints about mobility are that rolling requires a double-tap of a movement key, which I would sometimes do on accident, and you cant dodge or roll while your weapon is sheathed. To be perfectly honest, I only touched 1 of the 3 skill trees, Soul Magic. Progression felt pretty significant; I started with shooting tiny, pathetic wisps of magic that did measly single digits of damage, then slowly got some stronger spells with longer cast times and greater mana costs that looked more impressive. By the end I was hitting for thousands of damage with the mighty SOUL SPEAR, a spell that pierced through all enemies in a line, with a huge particle effect and a mighty thrum of audio! They do a great job making you feel like a mage who is improving his skill substantially. In addition to that, there's also the aforementioned Blood Magic, and Summoning (which has both blood and soul scaling). But I didn't actually touch any of that stuff. About a thirdway through the game they tell you, "hey, pick soul or blood" and then you get a permanent buff to that, so it feels like they slightly discourage hybridization. You can definitely tell this was a game made in mid 2000s though. They pepper in a little bit of "platforming" (mostly just dodging traps and the like), and a little bit of puzzle-solving here and there. None of these elements are really core to the game, but they all add a fresh breathe of air since they come up only seldom to give you a break from the "GO GO GO!" you experience while fighting enemies. Alot of things about this game aren't too impressive though. Many enemies you'll see over and over again, some of those enemies felt like INSANE damage sponges, and you can cheese alot of the more durable guys by just casting freeze... hitting once... casting freeze... hitting once, etc etc. The RPG elements are light-as-a-twig, the gear upgrades you get are honestly far-and-few-between. The voice acting is mid at best, the story is pretty trite and predictable (with no choices to make), the OST isn't that remarkable (one of the mid game tracks DID stand out to me though, perfect for setting the scene, and they really liked to use string tremolo, so its not like its all bad). As for bugs, I only encountered a few. I assume because I played this in 2024 and this is a 2007 game, but I did randomly crash here and there. One big crash was right before a cutscene started to play, but that seemed to be a common issue as a found a resolution to it immediately and fixed it in about a minute. Oh yeah, the base camera controls are kinda weird too, but they have an option that makes it not terrible so I just turned that on and forgot about it. All and all, I played through Avencast once, felt fully satisfied, and will gladly recommend it to anyone who wants a old-school mage game you can pick up and get into instantly. Is it great? No. Is it jank? At times, yes. But is it worth playing? Sure, at least once.
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This review is going to be from the point of view of someone who's played both combat paths before, don't be fooled by the time steam says i have, i originally got this game back when PC games were in boxes you bought at the store, thats how old this game is, its just that i lost the disc years ago and only just recently found it again on steam. so in actuality i've beaten this game twice, one with the melee magic focus and one with the ranged magic focus and im playing again with a ranged focus, for future reference, blood magic is melee and soul magic is ranged. why would i buy this again when i've beaten it twice? because i find the game to be just that pleasant to play, its take on mage focused gameplay is very unique, one that hasn't been replicated before and allows you, as a mage to have a complete magic based melee combat system where your staff is used as both the focus and the source of melee damage. the story is pretty basic but serviceable, the voice acting isn't annoying, the slightly animated picture cut-scenes are nice and the equipment is fun to get. there are plenty of side quests and the game can get challenging at times, espeically if you are still not use to how the camera works in this game but there are tricks, for both magic paths to deal with enemies. for example there is an enemy at the late stage of the game that has the ability to suck you towards it and then completely destroy you with its melee attacks, as a blood mage thats a problem, unless you have the hammer of rage spell upgraded to hammer of wrath or hammer of blood vengence, a powerful and devistating attack that will go off even when getting pulled in by the monster. as a soul mage you instead use mighty soul beam to deal with these beasts and have to keep at a distance. whats really plesent about this game is the little contained area's it does that can invoke the wonder of "whats beyond?" which older games did a lot back in the day and while it might not be a positive for some it is for me. i have heard some people have had problems running the game, which is understandable given that its a very old game thats trying to run on windows 10 or above, but so far i haven't had any problems running it on win10, though tabbing out has made it crash. also if you do play, save often, the game has auto save but thats for quest complitons and not for checkpoints, do lots of manual saves. i highly recommend this to anyone who has been wanting to play a game thats all about being a mage and you use nothing but magic and your staff to fight the monsters and beasts you encounter, the story is decent, the characters are alright and the environment is pleasant for a game that came out in 2007, music is alright too.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is currently priced at 4.99€ on Steam.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 4.99€ on Steam.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage received 490 positive votes out of a total of 707 achieving a rating of 6.66.
😐
Avencast: Rise of the Mage was developed by ClockStone.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is not playable on MacOS.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is not playable on Linux.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is a single-player game.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage does not currently offer any DLC.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage does not support Steam Remote Play.
Avencast: Rise of the Mage is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Avencast: Rise of the Mage.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 14 June 2025 19:23 |
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| SteamSpy data | 11 June 2025 05:10 |
| Steam price | 14 June 2025 20:44 |
| Steam reviews | 13 June 2025 07:54 |
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- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Avencast: Rise of the Mage
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Developer
ClockStone
Release
17 Mar 2010
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