Avanor: The Land of Mystery is a classic roguelike role-playing game originally developed in the early 2000s. After being abandoned for over two decades, the project has been revived and is currently being modernized for a new release.
- About Avanor
- Project History
- Current Status
- Features
- Building and Running
- Gameplay
- Documentation
- Contributing
- License
Avanor is a single-player roguelike RPG set in a rich fantasy world. The game features:
- Permadeath - Classic roguelike tradition where death is permanent
- Turn-based gameplay - Strategic combat and exploration
- Procedurally generated dungeons - Each playthrough is unique
- Rich character customization - Multiple races, professions, and skills
- Deep item and equipment system - Weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, and more
- Complex magic system - Spells, resistances, and elemental effects
- Diverse creature ecosystem - Rats, insects, orcs, undead, giants and demons
- 7 Playable Races: Human, Half Elf, High Elf, Halfling, Half Orc, Dwarf, Gnome
- 8 Professions: Warrior, Wizard, Archer, Ranger, Cleric, Paladin, Alchemist, Bard
- 8 Core Stats: Strength, Dexterity, Toughness, Learning, Willpower, Mana, Perception, Charisma
- 5 Schools of Magic: Elemental, Body, Protection, Death and Surviving, with 26 spells between them
- 23 Skills: From archery and alchemy to mining, herbalism and climbing out of pits
- Experience & Leveling: Exponential progression curve
- Multiple Locations: Main valley, dungeons, caves, towns
- Dungeon Levels: Progressive difficulty through depth
- NPC System: Unique characters with quests and dialogue, all scripted in Lua
- A Calendar: The world keeps months, weeks and years, and herbs grow in their season
- Melee Combat: Attack, defend, special maneuvers
- Ranged Combat: Bows, crossbows, slings, thrown weapons
- Magic System: Spells from multiple schools
- Brand Effects: Special weapon effects (poison, fire, paralysis, slaying, etc.)
- Tactics: A stance from all-out attack to full defence, traded off against your own opening
- 12 Kinds of Slot, 14 in all: Head, neck, body, cloak, two hands, two rings, gloves, boots, light source, tool, missile weapon, missile
- Item Types: Weapons, armour, potions, scrolls, books, food, tools, gems, money
- Crafting*: Alchemy, cooking, mining
- 15 Creature Classes: Rats, felines, canines, reptiles, insects, humans, orcs, giants, kobolds, undead, goblins, demons, humanoids, blobs and others
- 10 Difficulty Tiers
- AI System: 18 base flags + 6 composite presets for diverse behaviors
- Special Abilities: Spells, skills, brands, corpse effects
- Create a Character: Choose race, profession, and gender
- Enter the Valley: Begin your adventure in the town of Avanor
- Explore: Visit shops, talk to NPCs, accept quests
- Descend: Venture into dungeons and caves
- Survive: Manage food, health, and equipment
- Grow: Gain experience, find better gear, learn new abilities
Press ? in game for the full keyboard layout, which is the authoritative
list. The ones you need first:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
1-9 |
Move (numeric keypad layout) |
w + direction |
Walk until something interesting turns up |
< > |
Up and down stairs |
, |
Pick up what is on the floor |
d |
Drop |
i |
Inventory |
e |
Equipment - wear, wield, take off |
E |
Eat |
D |
Drink a potion |
r |
Read a scroll or book |
Z |
Cast a spell (^Z repeats the last one) |
t |
Shoot at a target |
a |
Use a skill (A lists them) |
C |
Chat |
o c |
Open and close a door |
l |
Look at something |
@ |
Your character sheet |
M |
The messages you have missed |
S |
Save |
Q |
Quit |
Two more exist only under --god: ^F lights the whole level, and ^W
steps you anywhere on it. Neither costs a turn.
- Save often: There is no autosave -
Sis the only thing that writes a save - Manage nutrition: Starvation is a real threat
- Identify items: Unknown items can be dangerous or beneficial
- Learn from failures: Each death teaches valuable lessons
- Explore thoroughly: Hidden secrets abound
Avanor was created in 2000 by Vadim Gaidukevich. Its source code was published as Open Source under the GPL2 license in 2003. The latest release was 0.5.8 in 2006. Work had begun on creating a new quest and integrating Lua, but that was never finished.
In September 2025, the project was revived with a major modernization effort.
The project is currently in active modernization with the following status:
Core Infrastructure
- Sol2 integration for Lua scripting
- Cereal integration for serialization
- Removal of legacy XFile system
Code Quality
- Conversion of legacy enums to C++11 enum classes
- Type safety improvements
- Removal of deprecated code
- Modern C++ features (smart pointers, const correctness, etc.)
Game Content
- Every creature defined through the MonsterBuilder interface - 97 of them
across the Lua files in
world/, with their dialogue, quests and AI beside them - Levels, tiles, colours and map-generator settings all driven from
world/
Documentation
- Comprehensive documentation of all game systems
- API documentation for developers
- Design documentation for maintainers
Code Modernization
- Continued conversion to modern C++ idioms
- Performance optimizations
- Memory management improvements
Planned for Next Release
- The remaining content still hard-coded in C++
- Official release of revived Avanor
Avanor builds with GNU Make.
Everything below is expected to be installed on the system. Nothing is
vendored into the tree and there are no git submodules, so a plain
git clone is enough once the packages are in place.
| Module | Kind | Used for | Found via |
|---|---|---|---|
| LuaJIT 2.1 | shared library | The scripting runtime. Every creature, item, location and quest in world/ is Lua. |
pkg-config luajit |
| sol2 3.x | header only | The C++/Lua binding layer - usertypes, enum tables, protected calls. #include <sol/sol.hpp> |
/usr/include/sol |
| notcurses 3.x | shared library | The terminal display, including 24-bit colour and the resize handling. The C++ binding notcurses++ is what is linked; the game includes <ncpp/NotCurses.hh>. |
pkg-config notcurses++ |
| {fmt} 9+ | shared library | String formatting throughout the engine and the world scripts' messages. | pkg-config fmt |
| cereal 1.3 | header only | Save and restore. The whole world graph goes through it. #include <cereal/...> |
/usr/include/cereal |
| Zstandard | shared library | Compresses the save file (avanor.svg.zst). |
-lzstd |
| argparse | header only | The command line in Main.cpp. |
/usr/include/argparse |
A C++17 compiler is required - the code uses structured bindings,
std::optional, if-initialisers, std::string_view and inline variables.
GCC 9 or Clang 8 upwards will do. It is built and tested with GCC.
The versions this is currently developed against:
LuaJIT 2.1 notcurses 3.0.17 fmt 11.2.0
sol2 3.5.0 cereal 1.3.2 zstd 1.5.7
On Fedora:
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ make pkgconf-pkg-config \
luajit-devel notcurses-devel fmt-devel \
libzstd-devel sol2-devel cereal-devel argparse-develOn Debian and Ubuntu the header-only three (sol2, cereal, argparse) may not
be packaged under those names; dropping their headers under
/usr/local/include works just as well, since the build finds them on the
default include path.
make -j$(nproc) # release build -> ./avanor
make debug=1 -j$(nproc) # debug build with symbols -> ./avanor-dThe two builds keep their objects apart (obj/ and obj-d/), so they do
not tread on each other. make clean only clears the configuration you
name, so a full clean is both:
make clean && make debug=1 clean./avanor # play
./avanor --god # play with a thousand extra hit points and optional death
./avanor --seed 7 # build the world from a fixed seed
./avanor --demo # watch the world run itself, no hero
./avanor --helpThe game keeps its files in ~/.avanor: the save (avanor.svg.zst), the
high score table, and the optional memorial file for dead characters.
| Legacy | Modern | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Lua binding | Sol2 | Type-safe, modern C++ API |
| Bundled Lua 5.0 | LuaJIT | JIT compilation, performance, Lua 5.1 compatibility |
| Custom save/load | Cereal | Header-only, powerful serialization |
| Enum raw values | enum class | Type safety, scoped enumerators |
| Raw pointers | Smart pointers | Automatic memory management |
| C and Custom strings | std::string | Standard library string functionality |
| Custom containers | std::vector, std::map | Standard library containers |
- Lua Runtime: Migration from bundled Lua 5.0 to LuaJIT
- Lua Binding: Complete rewrite using Sol2
- Serialization: Migration from XFile to Cereal
- Monster Definitions: New MonsterBuilder fluent interface
- Type Safety: Widespread use of enum classes
- Code Organization: Improved namespace usage and encapsulation
Avanor is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later (GPLv2+).
Original Author:
- Vadim Gaidukevich - Project founder and primary developer
Project Revival (2025-2026):
- Joachim de Groot - Modernization, Sol2/Cereal integration, LuaJIT adoption
For questions, feedback, or contributions:
- Project Repository: GitHub (when published)