A Valley Without Wind

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I'm over 4 hours into this game, and still have no idea how to properly read/navigate/warp using the dungeon and region maps and my frustration is building. To help fill in the blanks, I even went looking for an online instruction manual, but none exist. Nor does there seem to be anything posted in the community/forum about how to read the maps. I've gone so far as reastarting the game TWICE thinking that I missed some instructions along the way... but from what I can see, this bizarre chart/grid/map thing the devs created is only addressed as a sketchy footnote off the [?] next to the Dungeon Map (Where they even acknowledge some players may not like/understand the map but do nothing to fully explain it.) I've been gaming since the 80's and really wanted to love this game, but can't look past this glaring issue. DtB

A great argument against procedural generation. Very repetitive, and poor interface doesn't help. A pity, it has(had?) potential and I really wanted to like this game.

A very odd curiosity but I don't feel like there's a "good game" in here. Constantly picking up crafting materials but the "town building" element only seems to be through instantly-built structures you earn from missions. Bizarre world generation that expects you to carry hundreds of expendable crates and platforms. Gamepad support but only really playable on M+KB. Loads of unscaleable (??) text, hard to read at 1920x1080. One of the ugliest aesthetics I've ever seen... good music though.

12 year old game nobody plays. A game that is/was often offered in bundles or even free and nobody wants it. This is basically like abandon ware but i am going to write about it anyways. For me personally i think i have started to play this game at least 2 times before and always quit early on. 'Too much to learn. Too janky. Too hard'. I suppose i needed to take a good tour of more well known Arcen games to learn how they do their games. AI War, Last Federation and Bionic Dues are great examples of the MO Arcen has for their games. And they got a specific style all right, this 'you have already lost, give up already' or 'told you so' kind a style that i have not seen much elsewhere except La Mulana devs who are also pretty legendary d*cks towards players who just rush into action and think this is a usual McBurger game you can master easily. Nope,. not even close. But as i have played more of their games you start to expect the usual 'You area as good as dead, you got 50 turns/hours before those guys over there are going to stomp you to the ground and give you names like Charlie and Suzanne' Going forth from here it is obvious this game will just never be any favorites for a large swath of players out there. Randomly generated maps? Even inside small shacks can have these weirdly formed rooms and caves? Deliberately made mechanics that punish players that try to 'do everything and collect everything'. Oh wow. This game got them and it tells you up front about them but you as a player need to read this and understand what it means. Hence getting somewhere is about trying to figure out what is important and what is just a huge time waste as this game gladly offers it all to you and gives you a tough challenge on top of it too. 'Fight until you drop of exhaustion'. Pretty balsy design choice but their games all got these elements and that's why i like their way. So playing this game...first of all be ready to accept weird and janky. And be prepared to optimize things, particularly if you don't drop the difficulty. 'normal' is always hard in these games. And hard is 'Insane'. Now with that out of the way it is hard to describe typical game play: You try to find resources, rescue people. Even if you die you actually have to use one those rescued people and game is basically over if all of them die. Wait what? And game wants me to also send these on missions that may kill them as well? Oof.... And then there is the usual 'enemy is 20 levels above you and you will die! Might as well give up' starting point. But man the DEPTH these games always have. This one is no exception. Even after 12 hours when you think you have seen most of the missions you find new and weird stuff (that kills you if you rush it). The options you have makes your head spin. And in a good way. Always liked in these games that the usual game logic doesn't work at all. Risks need to be taken. You can't turtle defense your way to victory. So haul that *** out to the winter storm and get going. Your biggest enemy is yourself as you can do stupid stuff, inefficient stuff and stuff that....makes you put the game down? Again i must say the game design is really something. Clearly this could never have been a big seller with these traits but they released the game anyway. Bravo. Weird/10 scoring. Know your poison if you pick this up or learn to appreciate the massive depth Arcen games have under that jank and learning curve.

A sad case of ambitious overreach. Better to aim for the stars than create something bland, of course, but sometimes a shot aimed very high will still land somewhere... disappointing. The music is quite good, as one would expect from Arcen Games. The gameplay is... basic. Action and platforming. You run, jump around and shoot spells at enemies. Some spells have weird attack patterns, others have quirks like "bounces off things" or "affects a specifically shaped area around you", but for the most part you'll probably just use one that shoots a thing that hurts stuff. Monsters are plentiful and sadly rather samey. You unlock more monster variety as you kill basic ones, I think, but that's a weird way to ration your enemy variety, if you ask me. I died zero times in eight hours, but then I didn't dive into the absolutely riskiest or most foolhardy situations I could. The story is a bit thin. It's the future, more or less. Reality's gone wonky, so lots of places and eras got jumbled together in what can only be described as a procedurally generated mess. Some nice crystals (or are they?!) show up and save a few remnants of humanity by giving even fewer of us magic powers like... being able to stack crates, place platforms, whip vines about, blow bubbles, burn trees for wood (um...) and... oh yeah, shoot entropic doom blasts that move slow but wreck things' ♥♥♥♥ pretty good. A mixed bag, as it were. Also, there's a nasty, evil wind storm around most of the planet that actively seeks to rip apart anything alive... except the monsters, apparently. And this all ties together with an evil overlord of some description whom you have to weaken by taking down its lieutenants - which levels down the overlord while levelling up yourself and the basic monsters, as well as levelling up the spell gems you can craft out of the wood you burned out of trees and the rocks and gems you... well, burned out of rocks. Now, you can also whip gems out of rocks if you prefer... or use a few other spells with the "scenery damage" attribute. Comes in handy when you start encountering the rock-launching Dread Gazebos, and dear frick do I wish I was kidding about that. You can place structures on the world map to feed your people, increase their job levels, that sort of thing. Which, as I understand it, eventually gets them raring for an off-camera assault against the overlord which lowers the latter's level further - possibly after you've bumped off all the lieutenants - and then after your buddies have weakened it some more, presumably, you go in yourself and finish the job. I can't say I got that far, because the sheer number of samey environments, utterly random enemies (floating ice ball, bouncing snowflake, bull, eagle, an actual evil gazebo, melee robot, fireball-shooting robot, tiny flame-ring robot, bat, weird debuff-shooting bat... and so on and so forth)... well, all of this had worn down my desire to play. There's quite a lot of different terrain types, which is cool. They have their own layout styles when you get to the action-platforming exploration, also cool. You can find various things in the random buildings generated along with the random landscapes, cool. Someone put a lot of time into creating scores of different interior room layouts, and that, if anything, is cool. But it just... doesn't feel right. Everything is so random. The interiors have silhouettes for their obstructive architecture, steps, etc. "Ladders" are just stacks of platforms you traverse by jumping up or dropping down. It makes me sad to give a thumbs down, but here's the summary: I myself do not regret throwing money at a lovely company like Arcen Games, but that is the only reason I would recommend people buy this game for. If you end up having some fun with it (and/or the equally wonky sequel), well, that's just a bonus.

A metroidvania crossed with a Terraria-style roguelite with Soulblazer elements thrown in. Really not a bad mix, especially once you get the hang of it.

It's really weird, it's not for everyone, and it has it's flaws. But if this is the sort of game that you like, then you're going to _really_ like it.

[h1] A Valley Without a Clue [/h1] [b] What I Liked [/b] It was a memorable experience, as I still remember playing it years later. [b] What I Did Not Like [/b] I tried to force myself to like it, but, it's just not a good game. It's a weird game that makes no sense. Nothing makes sense. I mean, they developers gave people who purchased the first game the second game, for free. [b] Why I Stopped Playing [/b] It just wasn't fun. [b] Disclaimer [/b] I have been a gamer for over 30 years. I tend to play mostly PC games. I also bounce around between games A LOT. I may purchase a $60 game and play it for 2 hours or spend $10 on a game and spend 50 hours on it. Even if I played a game a short time, it does not mean it is bad. It just means another game caught my attention. I also complain about flaws in games a lot, even about the littlest of things. Keep that in mind when reading my reviews. If I do not have a complaint, then the game must be special!