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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.
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.
