A Valley Without Wind
2012 · Arcen Games
Has it aged?Why ↓
A Valley Without Wind is a side-scrolling action-platformer set in a ruined technological world, where your spellcasting hero jumps through procedurally generated buildings and dungeons. You gather ingredients, craft stronger spells and build a settlement towards confronting the continent's overlord. Fighting takes skill; finding another basement to empty takes rather less imagination.
You choose how to play, and the world of Environ adapts around you.
The publisher’s description, from its Steam store page.
What it looks like
the trailer, then the store's own shots
The verdict
Skip it unless gathering resources and experimenting with spells can carry a game for you. Aiming, jumping and choosing the right spells give the combat something worth learning, but the sprawling dungeons offer too few memorable discoveries. Its peculiar appeal survives better than its exploration: there's comfort in another expedition for materials, but little reason to expect the next building to make the wandering worthwhile.
Play it if
You enjoy settling into a resource-gathering routine, and you'll retreat from a difficult fight to craft a spell better suited to it. You can happily spend an evening collecting building materials without needing a memorable story to tell afterwards.
Skip it if
You need deliberately designed platforming levels or distinctive discoveries to keep exploring. If repetitive enemy fights and searching room after room for crafting materials make you stop playing, the settlement goal won't rescue this.
Common questions
- Does dying erase my settlement and continent?
- No: you choose another hero and continue in the same world. The dead character's personal stats and some supplies are lost, rather than the whole campaign.
- Why do parts of the continent become inaccessible?
- Storms move across the continent map as you play, changing which areas you can enter. Access isn't simply a matter of defeating whatever lives in a neighbouring square.
- Is A Valley Without Wind 2 just a revised version of this game?
- No. The 2013 sequel rearranges the concept around shorter, tightly designed platforming stages and strategic world-map turns, where you command troops to fight, scavenge, build and recruit.
What everyone else said
we link, we don't reprintHas it aged?
How does it hold up today? Based on recent reviews, how opinions have changed since launch, player activity and updates.
Too few recent reviews to stand alone, so this leans on its all-time rating.
Reviews via Steam ↗We don't have player counts for it.
Too few recent reviews to compare with its launch.
The developer posts no update notes on Steam, so we can't tell.