A Valley Without Wind's impending art revamp in version 1.3, sale now
A Valley Without Wind is a massive PC and Mac game from a tiny development team, meaning it experiences the standard industry lifecycle in a unique way. Arcen Games launched two major updates to the initial release, appearing to be in the process of completing the game even after its launch, and now update 1.3 hopes to rework "the biggest thing that players who have not bought the game gripe about," Christopher Park says: the art.
A visual update isn't what Arcen Games initially planned on integrating, however. Update 1.3 is a reactionary measure to a few things, including the launch of Diablo 3.
A Valley Without Wind was selling three times better than Arcen Games' first title, AI War, when it first hit Steam on April 24. "Then a funny thing happened – Diablo 3 came out," Park writes. "Literally the next day, our sales plummeted to one-tenth the value they had been the day prior. The whole game industry saw a contraction, even on the iOS, for a week or two there, from what I could tell. Keith remarked that it was like 'a massive whale jumping out of the ocean and the ocean level falling for everyone else.'"
Now, to generate more interest from the press (you know us so well, Arcen) and to satisfy fan demand for better art, Arcen Games hired Heavy Cat Studios to rework the visuals. The team should be done with the reskin in November, along with a dozen new spells and more updates, making the final product A Valley Without Wind 2.0.
A Valley Without Wind is finishing a run as Steam's Daily Deal right now, with just a few hours left. Check it out for cheap here, and read about Arcen Games' update details and anti-Kickstarter philosophy in Park's blog post here.
