A Valley Without Wind Hits Alpha: Side View, Underground, And Increased Variation
Arcen Games is pleased to share the latest update for our procedurally-generated action-adventure game A Valley Without Wind. After a month of silence and head down work we've reached Alpha, which introduces a major shift to a side view perspective, adds underground caverns, and significantly increases general variation -- among many other items.
The change from top down to side view is a significant leap forward; taking the game out of the prototype state, and moving it into a state of fun.
Visually, everything is much more striking without any actual retooling to the backgrounds and objects themselves, and there is now a sense of enjoyment in playing, even with the limited gameplay. To be clear, the perspective is the only sizable change being made to the title, and one we felt was necessary for the game as it makes its way to beta and then official release. Items that were mentioned in previous updates, previews, and interviews are at current very much applicable. Arcen's founder Chris Park take a big picture look in this developer journal for those interested in more information on the fundamental shift and our reasoning behind it.
Several other new items to touch on as well, including the addition of underground caverns joining the above ground areas and interiors to fill the regions.
The caverns themselves vary between one another greatly, and contain all sorts of interesting secrets such as underground doors, interiors, specific objects, and more. On top of that, the current build brings forth a ton of new objects and buildings, our current character line-up has a lot more variation in outfits, adjustments have been made to how monsters spawn, and the list goes on. For a complete explanation of everything that's been shown off so far, as well as what's in the works for the game, we point your to the info dump in our latest dev journal.
The Alpha Trailer (above as well) is available to view now, and includes a 1080p version previously absent from our video updates. It offers much clearer visual detail when compared to 720p, and gives a better impression of the actual look of AVWW. 16 new screenshots can be viewed on the massively updated features page for the title as well.
A Valley Without Wind is currently set for official release in October, with a playable beta available to pre-order customers coming in August.
About Arcen Games
Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic. Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is aplatinum sponsor.
AI War's third and largest expansion Light of the Spire marked Arcen's first release of 2011, and now the company has shifted its focus and excitement to the development of A Valley Without Wind. Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles. For all the latest news, media coverage, and some of our other musings, follow us on our developer and individual game pages on Facebook or on Twitter: @ArcenGames.
