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Indie Royale Choices 2013 bundle includes A Valley Without Wind, Cognition
Indie Royale's latest pay-the-minimum priced bundle is available now until January 15. Currently sitting at $3.79 and slowly rising in price, the Choices 2013 bundle features eight games in total, including Arcen Games' side-scrolling action/adventure game A Valley Without Wind and its sequel. The bundle also includes the first two episodes of Cognition, Phoenix Online Studios' point-and-click adventure series. The other four games in the Choices 2013 bundle are as follows: Dungeon Hearts by Technobabel, Pid by Might and Delight, Owl Cave's Richard and Alice and Waveform by Eden Industries. Every game is available on both PC and Mac via Steam and Desura save for Richard and Alice, which is limited to Windows users through Desura, though the game is currently vying for Steam distribution if it earns community approval on Greenlight. Those that pay at least $6 for the bundle will also receive the "Slipstream Vol. 1" chiptune album by Cold Storage.
IndieFort Spring Bundle on GamersGate; Arcen's library 75% off on Steam
The GamersGate IndieFort Spring Bundle is now available, offering up a quintet of indie games at one rock-bottom price. The core bundle contains Arcen Games' RT, AI War: Fleet Command, Coffee Stain's tower defense game, Sanctum, the Linux-originated space shooter Zigfrak, Legendo's Fortune Winds: Ancient Trader, and an alpha version of Stygian's turn-based RPG, Underrail.All five cost $7.99 in total, or you can add a little extra if you want to tip the developers. There are also some map packs and DLC bonuses to unlock, depending on how many copies the bundle sells overall.Steam is also offering the entire Arcen library for 75 percent off. That includes Shattered Haven for $2.49, or A Valley Without Wind 1 and 2 for $3.74, on sale with the rest of Arcen's games all week long.
A Valley Without Wind 2 finds some breathing room on Steam
A Valley Without Wind 2 quietly blew through Steam today for PC and Mac, courtesy of indie developer Arcen Games. The sequel is 25 percent off now through February 25, for a cool $11.25.A Valley Without Wind 2 is bundled with its predecessor, A Valley Without Wind, and is free to anyone who already owns that first game. The games will always be sold together, so the purchase price is really a two-for-one deal.A Valley Without Wind 2 blends classic 16-bit platforming and turn-based strategy into a modern package: Think Contra meets a Metroidvania game with strategy overtones.The launch of A Valley Without Wind 2 was purposefully engineered to fall on the softest of breezes – Arcen Games' marketing man Erik Johnson told Joystiq that the team kept this launch on the down-low because the first game was over-hyped prior to its release."Though this is a sequel to our 2012 release A Valley Without Wind, it's more of a spiritual one; this game is a jump like Zelda 3 was from Zelda 2," Johnson said. "While we were able to accomplish a lot with the first game, it was experimental and clearly not for everybody. So once we got our finances together for an update to the graphics, we decided to put our focus on a brand-new game that took everything that we learned while making the first game, plus many new ideas."%Gallery-179113%
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.
Steam Summer Sale, Day 4: Saints Row: The Third, Walking Dead, Indie Bundle 4 and more
Survival Diary, Day Four:I don't know how much longer I can keep hiding here. It was safe at first; quiet even, like a snow-packed forest or the very depths of the sea, but his footsteps continue to grow closer. Eventually, he's going to find me, and when he does the very core of me will be torn inside out and used to purchase games like Saints Row: The Third, The Walking Dead or any number of the other games on sale today.I know now that my sanctuary beneath the sofa is no longer a sufficient haven in which to ensconce myself, so I must attempt to find new refuge. There's a very good chance this is my last entry, so please, if you find this, tell the pocket watch I love her.Always,Wallet
Take a tour with us through IndieCade at E3
We're not very good at lying, so when we say "A Mother's Inferno was an absolutely terrifying indie game," we mean we played it alone, at night, on a big-screen TV, and we just about peed our pants no less than seven times. Seriously, we haven't slept soundly in weeks. Not all of the games at IndieCade's E3 exhibition were psychedelic horror fests; some of them were eccentric, rich platformers, such as Arcen Games' A Valley Without Wind. And a few were downright happy, such as Steve Swink's Scale. Check out a few of our stand-out IndieCade titles in a guided tour right up there.
IndieCade at E3: The haunting of A Valley Without Wind
I'm being haunted by A Valley Without Wind.After writing up its Indie Pitch, I believed it would venture forth into the cold, discriminating world of indie game launches with an extra bullet in its magazine, but that I would be largely uninvolved and perhaps unaware of its performance, as I have to believe with most indie games that ping my inbox. Instead, A Valley Without Wind and its developer, Arcen Games, began to appear in my daily news feed. A whisper of beta updates. The flash of a major-outlet review. A piercing launch on Steam. And now, the biggest shock of all: A spot in E3's IndieCade exhibition.So finally, I gave in and played A Valley Without Wind, hoping to exorcise its presence from my Twitter feed – though like the antagonists of most ghost movies, I doubt this one will leave me alone for long.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: A Valley Without Wind
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, CEO and lead programmer for Arcen Games, Chris Park, talks innovation, ghosts and game creation in A Valley Without Wind. What's your game called and what's it about? A Valley Without Wind is a Metroidvania-style adventure game set in a procedurally-generated post-apocalyptic world. There are also some strategic and city-building elements layered on top of this core game -- you can literally help your settlements to rebuild, expand and reclaim the world from the forces of evil that now oppress it. The game focuses on magic and crafting, which leads to a pretty interesting take on action-adventure combat.
