ChairQAsition: Valley

Your intrepid heroes test Valley on three Linux powered boxes of business. Did it pass? Let’s find out.

Game: Valley
Webzone: Valley
Devel: Blue Isle Studios
Engine: Unity
Price: £14.99 / US$19.99 / CA$21.99

Wazzat: Explore the vast and beautiful world of Valley using the power of the L.E.A.F. suit: a fierce exoskeleton that grants exceptional speed and agility along with the phenomenal ability to manipulate the life and death of all living things.


CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Makes with the working

Venn – CHAIRCHAIR

  • Thar be spite crashes.
  • These happen during level transitions and it bit me twice, HARD.
  • I say hard since there is no real save system so it starts you all the way back at the beginning of the previous zone.
  • Refuses to launch if Vivaldi or Chromium are running.
  • 60/70 @ 1080
  • Mid 30’s @ 2160

Jordan –  CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Thar be inopportune spite crashes
  • Twice after finishing a level, which made me go back and redo it cuz it didn’t finish saving
  • That’s a quick way to get jordan to nope

Pedro – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The only thing that didn’t make with the working for me was the subtitles.
  • It’d show the first line and then be stuck there until the audio-tape was over.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

Venn – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I like games that prove that Unity can be both performant and pretty.
  • Valley does these things in spades.
  • Both indoor and outdoor areas are wicked smooth.
  • All the environments are coherent.
  • I do wish the main baddies were something, different?
  • They didn’t seem to fit the world.
  • Music is totes outstanding and caught me off guard.
  • You don’t normally get that from an indie game.
  • Voice acting was passable+ in the sense they didn’t go with the lowest bidder.

Jordan – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Oh, it’s very pretty
  • Look what happens when you don’t use stock unity assets!
  • The soundtrack sounds like a Jethro Tull fever dream

Pedro – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks very pretty and the music is frickin’ spot on!
  • During the running on the electrified rails sequence, that music alone turned it from just being a bit where you run down a corridor to “OMG!!1! Run faster! Jump! Run fast again! Weeeeeeeeee!”
  • I was smiling like a lunatic throughout the whole thing.
  • Damn was a good set piece!

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Control

Venn – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Tried to play it with the Steamy controlla since it seemed like a nice fit.
  • Unfortunately there was some jank with camera movement.
  • Keyboard and gerbil posed no problems.

Jordan – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Sometimes you get a little too into it and end up overshooting the fuck out of your jumps
  • Really my only gripe with it. Can’t quite tell where you’re gonna land

Pedro – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It’s a first person running/platforming game.
  • Why you’d want to play this with a controller, I don’t know.
  • While physics defying jumps may have made me ding this a chair in other games, in this game it fits.
  • And this game made me wish I could have more controls than casual jog or superhuman sprint for movement.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


FUN?

Venn – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • That was a little shorter than expected but for $5.00 it was an enjoyable romp.
  • If I had paid the iron price ($19.99) I would have been a bit miffed.
  • Storytelling and world building is clearly something these motherfu*ckers know how to do.
  • I honestly thought they were going to pull a gotcha right up until I jumped out of the final tube.
  • I was all “they want me to think the game is over, but it’s not really over”
  • …the game was over.
  • I Venned my way through it in 4 hours.

Jordan – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • 21 Wet, Sticky Maplebucks is a bit of a big ask for this jolly little jaunt
  • The game itself is actually pretty shallow, essentially being 3d straight line platformer
  • That said, it’s execution is spot on
  • The story is actually pretty decent too, all things considered. Sort of a whodunit
  • I usually prefer emergent narratives, but credit where credit is due
  • Crashes added another hour onto the gameplay, and there are hidden goodies you can go collect

Pedro – CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The only reason I can’t give it 4 chairs for the fun is because it’s short.
  • Criminally short!
  • I was having fun! I was having a lot of fun and the game ended.
  • It took my fun away from me.
  • In all seriousness, this is a game with very simple but refined mechanics.
  • They took movement, something you take for granted in all videogames and they improved it.
  • They quadrupled down on exploring exactly what it is that can make videogame movement compelling and built a short experience around it.
  • And they frickin’ nailed it!
  • I can safely say I never had so much fun running and jumping down a corridor for 5 minutes like I did in Valley.
  • This I would say is the perfect example of aesthetics and narrative being used solely to further the mechanics… or mechanic, since they really only had the one.
  • But goddamn, they did it well!
  • If it had come out this year, it’d be a contender for Linux game of the year 2017.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

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