Oh, my.
I read about A Valley Without Wind over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun earlier today, and I had to come here to say YES! I'm enthusiastically looking forward to this game becoming a reality.
From what I've read of AVWW, I came up with a somewhat similar design concept myself a couple of years ago. I called it the Living World; the idea was that you'd play in an extremely large world, with enough story- and exploration-based content (which changes over time) that you could play in it every night for years and never run out of new places to see and new things to do.
Those interested can read more about this idea on my blog (
http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2008/06/living-world-massively-single-player.html). Since this is the AVWW forum, though, I'd like to focus on this game as its features have been described or shown to us so far.
First, however, I quote the Official Statement:
To some extent we're not really looking for community feedback on things like game mechanics prior to alpha, because, well, we generally are never interested in feedback from people that haven't played the game in question.
Fair enough. I quote this comment to make the point that I understand the ground rules, and that just because I'm interested in objectively discussing various gameplay mechanics doesn't imply that I'm advocating their inclusion in or exclusion from AVWW, or that I intend to argue with anyone in favor of or against this or that idea. No point in that. The developers will make the game they want to make, and my comments are intended to be just one data point among many of reaction to that actual game's elements.
That said...
Procedurally-generated world: YES. This is a requirement for unending exploration gameplay, which is a particular interest of mine as well as being a gamestyle preference that is currently going unsatisfied except in unusual games like Minecraft.
Dynamic world: YES, YES, YES. This is the aspect of AVWW that I am most interested in hearing more about, as it's the part that can help keep the game playable over long real-time stretches (as well as being a distinctive element for marketing the game if it's given serious design/implementation attention).
Crafting: YES. This is an often-overlooked form of exploration -- it's exploration of a creative system.
Leveling: MMMMAYBE. I'll have some comments on that in the "How will leveling work?" thread; for now, I'm reserving judgement until people can play the public alpha and report on how well this feature actually works for this particular game.
Permadeath (of sorts): YES. I've contended for some time now that permadeath can work if certain design requirements are met, such as being able to "will" some subset of the dying character's goods to the player's next incarnation, and that characters don't have levels. (I understand the current thinking may be that rather than characters having levels, it's actually the
player who gains levels -- that might be enough for permadeath to work, since it eliminates most of the worst kind of loss when a character dies.)
Music: HMMM. Based on the current trailer, I'd hoped for something more ambient or orchestral. The square wave sound might be appropriate for a game that intentionally wanted to look and play like a retro 8-bit game, but it's not clear that this is intended to be such a game. (Is it?) This is possibly more a question of personal taste than Obvious Game Design Law, but I hope the comment is understood as being aimed at fitness for a particular game, not a criticism of the music itself.
Visual Look: NO. Again, this is not a criticism of the current art assets (as a long-time developer I can't draw or paint to save my life, so I'm in no position to criticize there), but of whether the art style is appropriate for the intended player experience. My feeling is that a game like this is much, much more immersive as a first-person 3D world -- somewhere in between Minecraft and CryEngine 3 would be just fine. On the other hand, that means cranking out a massive number of 3D assets, all of which is prohibitive for a relatively small independent studio. Even so (and bearing fully in mind that all we've seen so far are highly pre-alpha images), if I'm being honest then I have to acknowledge that I'm a little disappointed that a highly world-y concept like AVWW will be presented in a style that (IMO) makes immersiveness more difficult to achieve and maintain. Still, maybe I'm wrong, and the more stylized JRPG presentation will work just fine. I look forward to seeing more of it!
Overall, I'm very excited by what's been revealed so far about A Valley Without Wind. What's important is not how I'd make such a game, but that the folks who actually are making this game are encouraged to see their vision through to production. The game industry is desperately in need of such innovation, and I cheerfully support those who make the effort to create these new kinds of games.
Good luck!
--Flatfingers