Which A Valley Without Wind game do you like better?

[Endless Rain]

I'm somewhat curious about which AVWW game was more popular, so I made a poll about it.

I personally prefer AVWW 1, mostly because of the the huge worlds to explore. I also really liked the map, since it makes it so easy to explore without getting lost. I loved the setting too, and I have a couple theories about what caused the wind. I even liked the graphics! The thing I disliked the most was how it was hard to find enchants better than the ones I had, which means there was little incentive to explore once you had all the enchants and spells you needed. I absolutely loved the game and I was kind of sad when you stopped updating it , though giving away AVWW 2 for free made me much less angry about it .

AVWW 2 was a good game too, but removing the sandbox aspects of AVWW 1 caused me to not like it as much. I also really didn't like the windstorm generators in AVWW 2, since they were too inconsistent with AVWW 1. The strategy part was really fun though, and I almost beat the game on queen strategic difficulty.

[doctorfrog]

I have to say that though I would have liked to have seen a more involved management layer and a well defined endgame, Valley 1 is my favorite of the two because of the massively explorey levels. And they're more or less manageable as well, not overwhelming. V2 was so linear I didn't feel like I was doing much more than running left to right, but I didn't play it as much, maybe there's a level complexity adjustment I missed.

[Rekka]

Valley 1 for me also for about the same reasons as you both. A huge world to explore, art style (yep!) and not as linear as Valley 2.

[Kingpin23]

Valley 1

[Coppermantis]

I liked Valley 2's combat better, but the exploration and huge levels of Valley 1 are still more appealing. Even the art was, in my opinion, better in some places. Emphasis on some--The RNG really made the prettiness variable. At least Valley 2 was consistent.

[YoukaiCountry]

I like Valley 2 better.
Valley 1 felt like random gameplay systems wrangled together unwillingly, but 2 is a very fun and consistent experience. It sort of felt like a Super Nintendo game.
That said, I agree exploration was a blast in 1, and I do still enjoy it.

[Mahboii]

Tough choice, but I prefer AVWW2 for its more focused gameplay and AVWW1 for the sense of freedom and overall atmosphere. I have to say, when I got AVWW on release day without ever having heard of it, it was something special. I fell in love with it right away. I still love it, but I can see why people complained about the lack of ongoing objectives. It's like develop your settlement or don't, up to you. Defeat the overlord or stay on the continent, your call. Sky pirates shooting at you? Ignore them if you want or go to lengths to take them down, eh whatever.

However, I never saw the problem with the graphics that put so many people off the first game. I like the graphics in the first game, especially the backgrounds.

[Logorouge]

I have a soft spot for AVWW1. I'm the treasure hunter type, so the huge continent full of caves/houses to explore is just pure awesome for me. AVWW2 was more focused and polished, but I'm spectacularly terrible at the strategy part and the whole bullet caliber thing ended with me wondering why even mosquitos/pigeons had better bullets than me. But I guess that last part would have eventually changed with higher grade classes. (Would it?)

[EvaUnit02]

I fell in love with AVWW. I think it's the pinnacle of Metroidvania. A big randomized continent with randomized areas in which you could interact with so much. Creating logs from telephone polls to then be used in crafting? That was amazing. Then, when you thought it was all over, a whole world full of continents opened up for you to explore. Each continent (for the first few, anyway) even offered brand new things to experience. I was genuinely in awe and the game still holds the top spot on my Steam list as the game I've put the most hours in to.

I liked the idea of multiple game types but didn't think it was executed well. It was a bit ambitious. Still the fluid (if offbeat) mouse controls made up for it. I also really loved the idea of not just functionally but also aesthetically building up your towns with both structures and people.

The story was done very well, too. I wish it went a little further than it did but it was awesome to go find pieces of the narrative among the rubble of a wasteland. What's more, the setting itself really lent itself to enhancing the story. It was really cool to enter any building and find stuff lying about. In a house, I could imagine the family that may have lived there. The different eras also spoke to the (d)evolution of a world.

...and having your ghosts haunt an area? How cool what that?

The only real weak point was the "strategic" map. It was little more than an overworld map but the core game was just so good that it didn't matter so much. That was the one thing I was looking forward to most in AVWW2.

AVWW2 went in an entirely different direction with its core gameplay. It was much more Castlevania and much less Metroid. That's okay and it was a great game in its own right but I really had my heart set on a bigger, better, and "more" version of AVWW. The strategic game was, of course, fleshed out much more and I appreciated that. The time limit was a nice twist on typical strategic building games. Often, you're trying to build up. In AVWW 2, you were trying your best to keep from being torn down. That was pretty great.

Still, if there were to be a AVWW3, I would really like to see detailed exploration and crafting akin to AVWW with a detailed strategy game.

[keith.lamothe]

It's great to hear from folks who enjoy the Valley games.  They were financially between "rocky" and "disastrous" for us but we learned a lot, and I'm very glad that (despite whatever the rest of the world may think) there are at least some players for whom AVWW or Valley2 was "the thing I can't get anywhere else".  Delivering that experience is the main reason I write games for a living rather than enterprise software or whatever.

[Misery]

It's great to hear from folks who enjoy the Valley games.  They were financially between "rocky" and "disastrous" for us but we learned a lot, and I'm very glad that (despite whatever the rest of the world may think) there are at least some players for whom AVWW or Valley2 was "the thing I can't get anywhere else".  Delivering that experience is the main reason I write games for a living rather than enterprise software or whatever.

I really think if more people had actually tried the games, they woulda gotten into them pretty easily.  Particularly the second one;  I really enjoy the first game, but some of the mechanics sorta go all over the place (like the worldmap stuff) and those mechanics can feel unfinished, or "experimental" as I like to put it.   The second one is very focused though and the unique combat + the excellent strategy elements really bring this one together for me. It's gotten a ton of playtime out of me. 

And while I normally dont care too much for story elements in games, I liked that aspect with these, as they were well written and not super drawn-out as many games can be.  Both did this pretty well.

But yeah, the second one is the one I like more.   As it is, I started a new game in it tonight.  This also reminded me that it can be.... frustrating at times, yes.  I ran into Lilith in a room filled with purple stuff falling from the ceiling while she fires her 6-way shots everywhere and pigeons keep being pigeons. 

She then kept hitting me with her "punch the keyboard" attack.  Which is super-effective!

[MouldyK]

Late reply I know, but I prefer AVWW 1 because I felt it had the most potential if people weren't driven away by the art style. It felt more customizable, more open and generally had a better pick up and play appeal to me. Like I wern't under a time-limit all the time like I felt with AVWW2.

Still think that AVWW 1 was way too ambitious for Arcen to do at that point, but if they returned to it now with a 3rd instalment, using 1 as the base gameplay design and 2's art style, adding a few community-requested features and maybe a better Beta, we'd have a unique Metroidvania on our hands.

Also, Valley 1's shoot anywhere controls were more free-flowing and restricted the game less.


I see the Valley Game Series as One of Arcen's Two Big Games, the first being AI War of course, with the rest not really breaking down as much walls or changing the norm as much as they did. Then again, being experimental does have it's costs, one which you clearly can't afford at this time.


Valley 3 better come the same day as Half-Life 3 though!

[doubtful]

I definitely like AVWW 1 better, personally, but I'm also not much of a strategic player, preferring tactical games.  Odd that I play Arcen's games, then, right? 

I wonder if its sales might have recovered/been better if ya'll had stuck with your original plan of updating its graphics rather than making a second game, but I certainly have no information to base that speculation on!  I think the game would have at least turned off fewer people at a glance, certainly, with its unusual art style, lol.

But then again, people who are that shallow probably wouldn't make it past the tutorial level anyway, much less the rather bizarre world and sometimes almost disjointed feeling dichotomy between the world map and survivor mechanics, and the platforming stuff.

All in all, I think it was a wonderful experiment and a fantastic revival of some oldschool Metroidvania/open world concepts with a really fresh, different feel, and I have more hours logged on it than any other game you guys have made.

Offtopic a teeny bit, but, incidentally, Bionic Dues is probably my favorite Arcen game. While I won't try to objectively evaluate the quality of your individual games, I think it is the "best" in the sense that it's the most straightforward--which is good for business if nothing else!  I agree that the default difficulty is a little too low, though.

But despite some of the recent news, I think Arcen is going in the right direction, and I feel like the occasional game like Bionic Dues that is a little more approachable to those uninitiated in Arcen's style would definitely help draw in new players. Just my 2 cents on that.

But I'm definitely glad AVWW happened, and I'd love to see another Metroidvania style title out of you guys again!

[stephanreiken]

AVWW 1 was better. It just needed better player graphics, and perhaps a larger variety of enemies.

2 was a very difficult strategy game with a little platforming inbetween. Didn't like the strategy part as it seemed difficult to manage the guy chasing you and keeping your survivors and buildings in tact while still yet unlocking new areas in randomly placed locations. Too many things to easily go wrong when randomly generated, and I don't like playing at less than hardest difficulty if I can avoid it. I can avoid it in AVWW1, but I usually don't play AVWW at the absolute hardest because at hardest, like at any difficulty in 2, you die far too easily especially from unavoidable attacks. That part was probably worse than any other in AVWW2. Dieing in one hit to auto-hit attacks isn't much fun.

2 lacked real loot and the resources were pretty much intangible. I liked manually getting gems and stuff from multiple environments and random spells and enchantments.

It'd be nice if AVWW 1 had modding akin to Starbound or Minecraft.

[Derek Lyons]

I prefer the first one for  design of locations and gaming more pleasant itself