A Valley With A New Look In A Valley Without Wind 2

Arcen Games' side-scrolling random-o-action game A Valley Without Wind continues to divide opinion, mostly due to its unusual appearance, but perhaps the warring tribes of Like and Don't Like may be united by the sequel. It sports a new look, a bunch of new features such as building and it's going to cost the princely sum of no-pennies to anywho who bought AVWW The First.

You'll be wanting to read lead dev Chris Park's long post about his plans, intentions and promises for AVWW2, but the main point he wants to convey is that "Valley 2 is a true sequel -- it's a lot more different from the first game than many sequels are compared to their original." So this isn't a rehash, but rethought second pass at the concept. Sounds as though he was originally planning to substantially alter the original game (which he's already done a great deal of) but elected to make a whole new one so as not to encourage fans of the current design into firing up their angry tanks. Rather than risk a Left 4 Dead 2 outcry, the new game will be freefreefree to AVWW1 purchasers. Hooray!

Intended features include at least 120 new enemies, city-building, more of a turn-basde focus in the 'macro game', physics, bosses, perks and - perhaps biggest of all - an isometric world map. There are losses too, most pertinently the inventory and the sandbox element (though the game will still be procedural), as this moves to more of a directed but large-scale Metroidvania type of thing. But please don't react merely to my crude summation, as there's a ton of deep detail on how all this going to work over and why it's changing on the Arcen site. They're aiming to be a bit less post-genre with it, and believe "we have something that's a lot tighter and more fun."

I hope it pays off. AVWW was a game I wanted to like on paper, but couldn't in practice. Arcen are clearly aware that there have been... issues, so hopefully this time around all will be well. No screenshots yet, but there is a bunch of art, again on the site. A beta is planned for Novemberish.