A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 Dual Pack

This dual pack bundles two very different takes on the same post-apocalyptic premise by Arcen Games, the studio behind the cult grand-strategy title AI War. The first game, A Valley Without Wind, is a 2D side-scrolling action-platformer set in a world where time and space have shattered, mixing Metroidvania exploration with city-building and permadeath-lite survival. You play a "glyph bearer" who scavenges materials, completes missions, and works toward killing the continent's Overlord. The procedural generation is relentless: 14 biomes, hundreds of spells, and difficulty sliders that let you tune platforming challenge, combat strength, and city-building complexity independently. That granularity is a genuine design strength. The weakness is equally honest: without handcrafted level design to anchor all those systems, the loop can feel like a spreadsheet with a jump button. Critics landed at a Metacritic score of 54, with reviewers consistently praising spell variety and customization while criticising the way procedural maps drain any sense of place or narrative momentum. The sequel, A Valley Without Wind 2, is a more disciplined attempt at the same hybrid ambition. Gameplay alternates between two distinct modes: side-scrolling action segments where you hunt and destroy windstorm generators to purify map tiles, and a turn-based strategy overworld where you command resistance followers, manage scrap and food resources, construct buildings, and race against the clock before the villain Demonaica marches out of his stronghold. Each generator you destroy advances the strategy layer by one turn, so the two modes are mechanically coupled, not just aesthetically stitched together. On paper, that is a smart design. In practice, the coupling cuts both ways: a few bad strategic turns can render a run unwinnable, and auto-saving means you live with your mistakes. The Steam user review split sits at roughly 48 percent positive across 112 reviews, which mirrors the broader critical divide. What AVWW 2 does well is depth of number-crunching. Fifty mage classes across five tiers, 200 spells with physical mass that can actually block each other mid-flight, 64 character perks, and a follower management system where you send survivors on dispatch missions in exchange for resources and bonuses. Leveling up requires finding and clearing a Level Up Tower rather than grinding enemies for XP, which keeps progression deliberate. The difficulty sliders again let you decouple platforming and strategy challenge, so a pure strategy player can dial down the action sections without gutting the overworld tension. The soundtrack is widely praised even by reviewers who disliked everything else. The honest friction: the platforming in both games is where the design weakest. Procedurally generated levels mean no meaningful sense of spatial design, physics that reviewers repeatedly called floaty and imprecise, and combat encounters where running past enemies is often the optimal play. The first game is largely a proof of concept that the second iterates on with visibly improved art (Heavy Cat Studios redrew everything) and a focused narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end, unlike AVWW 1's infinite sandbox. Neither game has seen meaningful community modding activity or post-launch updates that changed the strategic calculus, so what you buy is what launched in 2013. Co-op is technically supported for up to eight players over LAN and fewer over internet, but multiplayer connectivity reports from the community have been mixed at best. Go in for AVWW 2's overworld strategy loop, treat the platforming as the cost of admission, and keep AVWW 1 as a curiosity showing where the ideas started.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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