This could be interesting multi-genre game, with strategy, metroidvania and some RPG elements.

Unfortunately, after some time in development it went to hard "random action mission" way, and never returned back. Strategy and RPG are still here, but too insignificant now.

So if you are fan of random platforming with neverending monsters and several types of monster-killing, it can be quite fun. I had some fun with it, even if I don't very fond of such type of games. But it not worth any significant money.

6.5/10

I enjoy it. Word of advice: try this one before the sequel.

Good:
+Perfect Metroidvania. Unlike Starbound and Terraria, the areas are broken into classic levels via a world map, and you choose where you go. The levels size are pretty good, and feature enough interior/exterior zones to mix things up.

+Great ARPG elements.

+Very easy co-op access, with many players able to join (seriously, a ♥♥♥♥ ton).

+Easily editable sprite. I made Neith and Nu Wa from SMITE. Unlimited possibility with texture packs.

+Day night cycle.

+Strategic elements, such as settlement building, resource gathering, etc.

+Graphics. I find the graphics cool and refreshing.

+Configurable difficulties split in groups. E.G.- Platforming difficulty, Combat difficulty, City Building difficulty. I really like that you can play around with the variables from the get-go. It furthers each experience to be completely different from the last.

Bad:
-Graphics. If you're a graphics connoisseur, you wont like this.

-Can get repetative, as games of this nature often do.

Overall:
I recommend it if you like these types of games. I, personally, find it to be a little more forward than the likes of Starbound and Terraria. It feels like an honest to god Metroidvania with other styles (the strategic elements, the world map) present. Grab a friend and have fun.

NOTE: I like the second one. Don't get me wrong- it's almost identical. One very important difference- the second one is not a randomized world, which pretty much means the same stipulations each time. This was a mood killer for me. I HIGHLY recommend trying AVWW before trying its sequel.

A Valley Without Wind is a unique game. The combination of randomly-generated levels and metroidvania-style platforming gives it a great deal of replayability. Something that I find interesting, however, is the game's emotional impact. While the game's story isn't particularily impressive, the combination of easily-learned gameplay, beautiful graphics, and incredibly memoriable music give a profound sense of solitude and loneliness. As a Glyphbearer, you are one of the only people in the now-shattered world who can survive outside the scant few villages spread across the continents, and the loneliness and sense of hopelessness that accompany sich a role are palpable. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Personally, the mood of the game feels very quiet and reserved. Unlike many other games, A Valley Without Wind truly gives the feeling of being a wanderer, passing through dead towns and snowy forests with nowhere to truly call home. If you're familiar with the concept of Catharsis, then this game is a brilliant example of it in action. The game provides a memoriable experience that I have never found in any other game, and I would heartily reccomend it.

This game is very deep, over whelming, confusing and complex. That is why it is simply just a fantastic game, there are barely any boundaries to what you can do within the game scope. You do literally progress how ever you want, with your settlement and advancing character(s), you will defiantly loose a few when playing. The game is not linear at all.

The game has a combination of RPG and platformer elements, which opens up to some crazy combinations of abilities, spells and gear enchantments your characters can use. For example, flying through the map at insane speeds while exploding fire every second. Why do you ask? Just because you can really.

The world you live in is all randomly generated, so each play through won't ever be the same. What else could you ask for? Content around the same skill level as you? Sure! Monsters scale to your playing abilities, so there is always a constant challenge. Don't think the game will let you off that easily.

From what I've played, I've barely scratched the surface to what this game offers me. But from what I saw, it was quite over whelming and made me question what the hell I was doing every second. And I loved it. But the main jist of it all is that you need to save your continent from an evil overlord. Once that's done, you just move onto an even bigger continent with a much harder overlord!

This game is truly an ultimate character customisation game, where there is pretty much no limit to how you kit out your character. But as well as that, you get to do the same with your settlement with saving, upgrading NPC's you find on your adventures, build buildings for them to live in and turn your home in a flourishing city! It's just going take a while to do so...

I would recommend playing the demo first, before you decide to pick this game up. And if you find it a bit too much and over whelming, I hear the sequel is a bit easier and simplified a bit for people to get into. But if you like a challenge, being over whelmed with information, go into insane fights with enemies and have no limit on what you want to do, then this is the game for you.

In conclusion:

• Vast game world, always growing with harder and harder challenges ahead.
  
• Insane character customisation, there is no limit to how your character will perform.
  
• Challenging enemies and bosses.
  
• Immersive, challenging and a complex game.

7 / 10, Don't fall down deep pits, you'll regret with what you've found.

It's alright, but not at full price. Much like a metroidvania but with worse level design, better variety of weaponry (spells) and a bright outdoors atmosphere

WARNING: If you're annoyed by games with sub-par graphics, look elsewhere. This game looks like it came out for Windows 95.

The immersion factor is 7/10, but there's a lot of text and need to grok a lot of concepts to play, but you get through that about an hour in. Technical problems prevent the game from being totally immersive. For instance, the game halts for half a second when the music track repeats.

The fun factor is 8/10. Leveling up your character's abilities and the settlement. Leveling up your settlers and sending them out on missions to collect resources for you (ala Assassin's Creed or FF Tactics) is a fun addition.

All in all, it's a game I could definitely spend hours and hours playing. There's real depth to this game (if you can get past the derpy graphics).

The game feels too raw and unpolished to be considered release-worthy. You're dropped into combat with very little explanation aside from hints on tombstones you pass. This couldn't hold my interest long enough to continue.

This game is amazing. I can't stop playing it. The MetroidVania style gameplay with procedural worlds is so satisfying.

Haven't found any valleys as of yet.
I'll continue my search.
I must remain strong for my loved ones.

Try the demo. It's not for everyone. I played it with my friend a long time ago, thought it was an OK game. Came back several months later taking my time playing solo, and actually getting INTO it. There's a LOT to wrap your head around, prepare to learn, you're gonna pick up a lot of things you don't know what to do with for a while, however in a lot of ways combat is no different than Terraria combat, or a platformer like that.

But the development is really good, and tutorials are really funny. The game breaks the "3'rd wall" of roleplay in really fun ways, making fun of the way we play games.

The overworld let's you build upon a settlement you already have. Almost reminds me of a Super Mario Bro's overworld map. Connect farms to your main base to feed your people. Send your people on missions. The main mission? To destroy the Overlord!! You can lower his level before facing him, by killing his Lieutennants around the regional islands, who are amidst an impenetrable slurry of WIND. There's a lot of counters to your missions, and a lot of ways to handle them.

Awesome game if you can get into it. I don't know if it's "indie game of the year" material, I have to take a lot of breaks. I think there's a lot to criticize, but I do get burning desires to play this game sometimes. It's not a crap game, and there's a lot of new things to discover that I think are pretty cool! Give it a shot if you can, and you might like it :)

Greetings, comrades! I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. I mean, who wouldn't? A randomly generated "Metroid-vania" style game with RPG-heavy gameplay, what more could you want? Well, the answer lies below, if you dare to enter the rabbit hole.

Pros:

As I already stated, the concept is amazing, and the RPG elements are simple yet complete. Unlike most RPGs, this one gives you a very strong weapon right off the bat. Not the best, but good enough to be a constant companion throughout the game.

I found the graphics to be a refreshing change from the standard "drab-&-dull" that older Indie games are known for (not all Indie games, calm down fan-people). The world is bright and sharp, with clean angles and stunning detail.

The custom difficulty is nice, allowing you to set your own pace.

The controls, while a bit quirky, are responsive and imaginative.

Cons:

While the RPG elements are all there, there really isn't a temptation to level up. I mean, my character could "tank" all of the early bosses with ease, the only challenge being when a boss is resistant to a certain elemental-type weapon, and you have to use another element to kill it. Even then, the challenge rests not in the boss itself, but rather in finding the new element required to kill it.

While I like quick weapon progression, as it allows you to do other stuff instead of trying to get a new weapon, this game suffers from a lack of other stuff to do. The quests are the same, the enemies are the same, the graphics are the same, and the gameplay style is the same. All the same. All the same. Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity? (Heh, see what I did there? Ha ha! No? Ah, forget it.)

As I said, the world is very realistic, but the characters are not. It's almost like playing one of those old CD drive games in which the people look like cut-outs pasted onto a background. This is actually a fatal flaw, as it throws off jumping in an odd way. It makes you unsure of what is in the background, or what you can jump on. I really can't describe it, but if you play it, you should see what I mean.


I really hate to say it, but this game's lack of creativity and excess of imagination bring this game down from the heights it could have achieved. It's almost like they were so focused on the imaginative idea of the game that they forgot to flesh it out into something workable. Plenty of people like the game, and I can see why, however I just couldn't bring myself to do the same.

Thanks for reading and have an awesome day!

While I had fun at first, running around, shooting stuff, breaking and collecting things, that turned boring rather quickly.

You run through the same boring looking landscapes, caves or buildings, kill the same enemies over and over again with some minibosses here and there and harvest some random stuff...
Also, the enemies seem to be no real threat at all, no matter if boss or not.

Graphics and art style in general don't look like much, the soundtrack is ok, but nothing to write home about.

All in all an ok game, but I just can't bring myself to keep on playing, just so I can do the same boring stuff over and over.

Buy? Unlikely. AVWW is a action platofrmer/settlement builder that draws similarities from Actraiser, Terraria, and rogue-like games. At first glance, the amount of content and the scope is daunting with a near infinite world (the game is unbeatable), inumerable levels called regions, and countless places to explore. I was originally happy with the immense exploration aspect until the rewards became less and less valuable. Mission success (which can be challenging sometimes, and are creative for a mostly procedurally generated game) earns you more spells, which you'll have more than enough of, and searching buildings or dungeons rewards you enchants, in which you will get too many duplicates of, and crafting ingredients or more missions for guess what? More needless spells. And then gathering currency is a total grind. Arcen deserves alot of credit for a large scope of a game and interesting concepts, but the end result is a major time waste that looks odd and not all that fun in the long run (and it's aLOOOOONG run).

Never thought I would like this game. At a distance it somehow looks like a silly flash game, but after a few hours you just might find yourself hooked like me.

The game is filled with fast and frantic platform shooting, with a lot of different spells and abilities and items. Not to mention, building and managing a settlement of survivors, repairing the world and crafting. Also the game seems to go on indefinatly constantly increasing in level of difficulty and rewards.

While the graphics may not be the best, they certainly arnt bad, and they are extremely fluid and work well with the action on the screen as you run and jump and fire off spells like crazy while the screen is practically filled with baddies firing back.

It can be a very confusing game until you figure out what it is exactly that you're doing, but once it all snaps into focus you see yourself with a game that gives you a heck of a lot of choice.

A Valley Without Wind is an experimental sort of game by Arcen Games, most well known for their space RTS AI War. A Valley Without Wind is a game that attempts to mix various genres with, heh, mixed results. The game doesn't have an engaging plot by any means, but where it really shines is it's fusion of gameplay mechanics from 2D platformers, turn based strategy games. Some of these implementations work really well, especially the platforming. It feels really nice and zippy once you get the dash or triple jump skill. The turn based overworld map is a dissapointment, primarily because nothing you do brings any sense of accomplishment. The most interesting thing you can do is unlocking a new biome, but that's generally time consuming and they're not as interesting as one would think. The other big issue with the game is the RPG inspired combat system. Your skills are items you can find in chests and assign to various hotkey, similar to the gem based skills in Path of Exile. Getting a more powerful skill means going to a more difficult area and opening chests until you find one. There are maybe around 15 skills in the game, so there is very little sense of progression. There also isn't any armour and getting new buildings means there are new aesthetic backdrops. Overall the fun in the platforming beat out the clunkiness and lack of depth of some of the other gameplay elements. What's really noticable is the potential the game has. The fusion is bold and daring, and with increased RPG elements, and features such as allowing you to make actual buildings in towns, this game could have been fantastic. All in all if you want a fast, smooth platformer that experiments with some interesting ideas, this game is for you.

Ok, let's forget about the controversial presentation for a second. You know where you fall on that. I want to talk a little about what was accomplished in terms of gameplay.

What Arcen set out to do was create a procedurally generated Metroidvania. What they have arrived at in the 1.207 version of the game, which for the foreseeable future is the final version, is largely successful. The game excels at its sandbox goals, offering ever evolving challenges where success feeds directly back into how powerful your character is and in some situations how dangerous the world becomes.

You can meet your goals through a surprising amount of freedom. Pure exploration, a large amount of fun mission types and fast paced platforming and combat can be pursued at your own pace and discretion. It really is quite an achievement considering everything is procedurally generated, right down to the attributes of the spells you craft with ingredients you discover or win through successful missions.

There's a lot to love in A Valley Without Wind - freedom and exploration in a randomly-generated world, crafting and upgrades, lots of perilous platforming challenges and a Rogue Legacy-style new hero system - but the experience is somewhat marred by the fact that the game looks like something that would barely pass muster for freeware back in the 90's. If you can past the somewhat dated visuals (although it can hit 60FPS, which is always nice), there's much fun to be had.

Just be mindful that this isn't really a game that holds your hand - as each playthrough is never the same, you may be frustrated at the fact that there's no real direction or point in the beginning. Stick with it, and you'll learn to love it.

When "A valley without wind" is what you strive for it in the game you should have an idea you're not in for an exciting adventure. I wasn't thinking and bought it anyway. Keep reaching for the stars with your goal of mild weather, indie game developer.

The premise is excellent and unique, but is very poorly executed.

Gameplay is shallow and repetitive. The game's marketing cites a level of depth and challenge that is absent. Enemies have simple patterns that are easily exploited. I killed half the bosses while they were offscreen. Player customization is nice but isn't anything new or unique. Platforming is made completely trivial by the ability to place platforms anywhere.

Visually the game is unclear, muddy, and unattractive. Characters are stiltedly animated. Enemies, pickups, background objects, and projectiles all look similar and the only way to differentiate them is by what color they are on the minimap.

The game's music is decent, with a nice main menu theme. The sound effects are inoffensive.

The whole time there is this feeling that "it gets better later". Maybe it does. But it starts terribly and doesn't get any better after 4 hours.

Something about the clunky-ish controls, HUD and character animations makes this game amazing. Its a mix between nostalgia and indepth gameplay. Pure lonelyness when playing by yourself (in a good way), but invite 2-200 (serously) of your friends and die slightly less quickly. Its realy a play it to believe it game, but I deffently think its worth it, not to mention the Valley 1&2 deal.

When you write the game out on paper, it sounds amazing. A co-op sidescrolling Metroidvania that is procedurally generated, in which you manage a town of dynamic townsfolk. Go out and find resources for the town, sponsor new buildings which then systemically feed into the local economy you operate in. Even the name is sweet as hell.

But sadly it feels absolutely terrible to play, has a UI that is not only dull but is so deep you could drown an elephant in it, as well as just being one of the dullest, post flash looking games I've ever seen.

Which is such a shame because you can feel the dedication and effort that went into the development of the game. It's impressive and I find myself wanting to like it, but never play it.