Support NeoGAF

[British Monsoon]

Details -

Developer: Arcen Games (previous titles; A.I. War: Fleet Command)
Genre: Procedurally Generated 2D Side-Scrolling Shooter/RPG
Players: Single & multi-player
Release: April 24th, 2012
Price: $14.99 / £9.49 - (10% off until Tuesday, 1st of May; $13.49 / £8.54)
DemoL http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/avww-downloads
Purchase: Direct from developers, Steam, GamersGate, Impulse, Indie City

Game info -

A 2D sidescroller without a linear path. An action game with tactical combat and strategic planning. An adventure game that lets you free-roam a vast, procedurally-generated world. A Valley Without Wind defies genre stereotypes. Unlike other procedurally-generated games, you also get a logical progression in difficulty, plus helpful tips and checklists to guide your travels (should you need them).

Choose for yourself how to prepare to face the vastly stronger Overlord. Complete a variety of missions to earn arcane rewards, or roam the wilds to uncover secret missions and stashes of magical loot. Customize your characters with unique combinations of enchants and spells that change how you move, jump, and fight. Or rescue people and bring them back to your settlement, recruiting them to help you in return.

You choose how to play, and the world adapts around you.

Impressions/Reviews -

• Kotaku - "Every thought of "I'll just give it five more minutes" turned into, "Wait, where did that last hour go?"
• Hook Shot Inc. - "A Valley Without Wind is a pure-brew indie game – it’s tonally retro, it’s antagonistic in its determination to be different and challenging in the extreme. It’s a bottomless pit of potential, just waiting for the mind-boggled to stumble their way in."
• IncGamers - 7/10
• Out of Eight - 7/8
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun - "The complexity and general esoteric approach of A Valley Without Wind makes it daunting, but also enormously alluring. I can imagine this game opening up under continued exploration to be one of those all-encompassing experiences that you can’t help sinking an unhealthy tract of time into."
• Try Indie - "The multi-faceted gameplay elements are all somewhat familiar on their own, but the genres have never been blended like they have here."

More here; http://www.arcengames.com/w/index.php/avww-press

Media -

Launch Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEei7x6iwDY

Images:








Is anyone else here playing this? I'm not overly enamoured by the art-style, but the gameplay is a goddamn time sink and so addictive. Here's my take after 11 hour of play;

This game is hard to describe - it's a procedurally generated 2D side-scrolling shooter, with RPG, platforming and city building elements. The core gameplay involves you exploring these procedurally generated environments in whichever manner you choose, be it following the self-generating, varied and endlessly spawning missions on the map screen, or simply exploring areas further and further away from your growing settlement to find resources and special, hidden missions. Throughout your journey you'll upgrade your character (but don't get too attached, as death is a fairly common occurrence), unlock new abilities, use gathered resources to improve those abilities and craft new ones, upgrade your settlement by crafting new buildings, rescue NPCs who become new citizens of your settlement (each with their own specialised skills and powers), battle hordes of increasingly difficult enemies, take down large and challenging bosses and push back the volatile winds that surround your settlement on ever side. The gameplay remains solid throughout with a distinctly old-school feel, be it in the shooting mechanics, or the platforming (where you place your own blocks and platforms!) and with a lot of hidden depth and scope, a wide variety of player abilities and a seriously addictive streak, A Valley Without Wind is a very unique experience in my opinion, and one that more people should be playing.

 

[dream]

Looks great, Bootaaay. Can you play this as a straight up Metroidvania and ignore all the city building stuff?

 

[Twinduct]

Been playing for a bit. well a few hours I mean.
Really enjoying it. Given the art style, I was hoping for more visual change. For example tier to tier spells look exactly the same. The character has a 'basic' cast animation for all spells.

Other than those tidbits, I'm enjoying myself. Game is really overwhelming though. Not sure where to go other than just jumping on 'missions'.

 

[British Monsoon]

Looks great, Bootaaay. Can you play this as a straight up Metroidvania and ignore all the city building stuff?

Yeah, pretty much, although the city building elements are very light - you do need the buildings so you can craft better spells/abilities later on though, but once you have the necessary resources you just go to your settlement, go to the 'guardian powers' menu and select the building, which is then automatically placed.

 

[SparkTR]

Was thinking of buying this, seems to be getting a good reception on the Steam forums as well. I'll sink my teeth into it on the weekend.

 

[.JayZii]

The art style looks like a parade of photoshop filters, but this looks like it could be fun.

 

[AcceptableGhost]

Procedurally generated pretty much makes me instantly disinterested.

 

[British Monsoon]

Game is really overwhelming though. Not sure where to go other than just jumping on 'missions'.

Yeah, it is really overwhelming, but on the other hand I'm glad they just dump you into the game with the basics and don't force you through a lengthy tutorial.

So far I've most been diving my time between resource collecting (searching for the yellow stash nodes in buildings/cave systems), doing the missions on the map screen and looking for secret missions hidden around the maps (which usually unlock something helpful to your settlement, or an NPC). The encyclopaedia gives you a good idea of what needs doing, what resources you need, where to find them, etc, but there's still a lot unexplained at this point.

Given the art style, I was hoping for more visual change

Same here, but I'm hoping that's something they expand on with future patches - the developers seem quite keen to listen to fans and implement heavily requested changes, as they've already put out 6 patches since release.

 

[KDR_11k]

The main task is to kill the overlord. But he's T5 and covered in storms (which give him 2 tiers in addition). The highest spell tier is 5 as well. So your goal is to get T5 spells so you can kill the overlord.

From there you get your short term objectives, you need to tech those spells up that you want to use so you need to collect or even unlock the crafting materials (and do enough missions to get the continent to T4 so you can get T5 orbs but that'll usually happen fast enough on its own).

The other preparations for the final battle are killing all the lieutenants (which only requires calming the storm there, they're T4 BTW) and pushing back the windstorms which requires wind shelters which require T3 aquaurgy IIRC which may require getting some NPCs and buildings (this is optional on the first continent as you start with the necessary stuff). Lieutenants will join the overlord fight if you don't kill them which means you're dealing with 2-4 superpowered bosses and the windstorms will add two tiers to the enemy level.

Enchants are useful to better your chances and of course you want more than one spell at T5 in case you encounter enemies with that specific resistance (you're fine with two though, no enemy has dual resistances).

 

[Twinduct]

The main task is to kill the overlord. But he's T5 and covered in storms (which give him 2 tiers in addition). The highest spell tier is 5 as well. So your goal is to get T5 spells so you can kill the overlord.

From there you get your short term objectives, you need to tech those spells up that you want to use so you need to collect or even unlock the crafting materials (and do enough missions to get the continent to T4 so you can get T5 orbs but that'll usually happen fast enough on its own).

The other preparations for the final battle are killing all the lieutenants (which only requires calming the storm there, they're T4 BTW) and pushing back the windstorms which requires wind shelters which require T3 aquaurgy IIRC which may require getting some NPCs and buildings (this is optional on the first continent as you start with the necessary stuff). Lieutenants will join the overlord fight if you don't kill them which means you're dealing with 2-4 superpowered bosses and the windstorms will add two tiers to the enemy level.

Enchants are useful to better your chances and of course you want more than one spell at T5 in case you encounter enemies with that specific resistance (you're fine with two though, no enemy has dual resistances).

Holy shit! Thanks for this!

Same here, but I'm hoping that's something they expand on with future patches - the developers seem quite keen to listen to fans and implement heavily requested changes, as they've already put out 6 patches since release.

Yeah, even one of the steam page features include (content updates)!

 

[Munin]

Huh I am confused. The Steam store screens still show that the game has its horrid art style (if you even want to call it that) from the preview versions...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/209330

But somehow on the screens you posted it looks much better now, almost decent...I guess there's both present now?

 

[British Monsoon]

Huh I am confused. The Steam store screens still show that the game has its horrid art style (if you even want to call it that) from the preview versions...

But somehow on the screens you posted it looks much better now, almost decent...I guess there's both present now?

I'm not sure if it's because they're old screenshots, or if it's because the game is procedurally generated, but the game does appear more detailed than the screenshots on the steam page show - here's a few more from my game;

The main task is to kill the overlord. But he's T5 and covered in storms (which give him 2 tiers in addition). The highest spell tier is 5 as well. So your goal is to get T5 spells so you can kill the overlord.

From there you get your short term objectives, you need to tech those spells up that you want to use so you need to collect or even unlock the crafting materials (and do enough missions to get the continent to T4 so you can get T5 orbs but that'll usually happen fast enough on its own).

The other preparations for the final battle are killing all the lieutenants (which only requires calming the storm there, they're T4 BTW) and pushing back the windstorms which requires wind shelters which require T3 aquaurgy IIRC which may require getting some NPCs and buildings (this is optional on the first continent as you start with the necessary stuff). Lieutenants will join the overlord fight if you don't kill them which means you're dealing with 2-4 superpowered bosses and the windstorms will add two tiers to the enemy level.

Enchants are useful to better your chances and of course you want more than one spell at T5 in case you encounter enemies with that specific resistance (you're fine with two though, no enemy has dual resistances).

Awesome, thanks for the explanation, it's a big help - I'm in the process of searching for the resources, completing the requirements, etc, so I can upgrade a couple of my spells to tier 5. I tried one of the wind shelter missions, but got my ass kicked, lol

 

[rohlfinator]

Not really feeling this game yet... Neither the combat and exploration are very satisfying moment-to-moment, so I'm kind of just playing for the grind of unlocking new stuff. AI War had a pretty high early learning curve, so I'm hoping it'll click with me once I have a better understanding of the game.

Arcen is pretty great at post-release support for their games, so maybe I'll just come back to this after a few major updates and give it another chance.

Procedurally generated pretty much makes me instantly disinterested.

It can be done well, but it's hard. I thought Spelunky did a really great job of generating procedural levels that felt like they had thoughtful design behind them.

I know they're different games, but the environments in this game feel too random to me, the encounters all play out the same (kite around the enemy while spamming your best spell), and the world seems built for quantity over quality. A lot of the game concepts are sound, but I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[KDR_11k]

The good thing is that the devs are extremely responsive, if you can express what changes are necessary and people agree then it will be changed extremely quickly. Well, unless it's "redo all the art by hand" which is simply far too much work. Arcen is willing to completely rip out core mechanics and redo them. You should see the first open beta version (0.500), the game looks the same but mechanically it's hardly recognizable.

 

[rohlfinator]

The good thing is that the devs are extremely responsive, if you can express what changes are necessary and people agree then it will be changed extremely quickly. Well, unless it's "redo all the art by hand" which is simply far too much work. Arcen is willing to completely rip out core mechanics and redo them. You should see the first open beta version (0.500), the game looks the same but mechanically it's hardly recognizable.

Yeah, the devs seem really great about accepting community feedback. I've lurked around the forums for a bit and there's already some good discussion happening there. I may put together a post once I can articulate my criticisms a little better.

I'm having a hard time coming up with reasonable change ideas, though -- the whole combat system and terrain generation system could both use a pretty big overhaul IMO, but those are extremely non-trivial changes.

I hate to sound so down on the game because it has a lot of really cool ideas, it just seems like the whole thing could have used a few more months in the oven.