Valley is an amazing, beautiful gaming experience. This is just one of the best games - the best first-person game - that I have ever played. The level design is perfect: it is the outdoors exploration sim that I have been craving. The gameplay is awesome - use your powers to improve life around you (imagine!) You are managing your environment to enrich and not to destroy, but not in a dull preachy way. It is just part of the excellent gameplay that makes you feel part of the environment as you are also moving through it. In the second half of the game, there is more typically FPS shooting, but the game rarely focuses on it.

How to relay the feel of the gameplay... here is an example: you are in the wooded trail that leads down to a river, you run full speed down the hill, with the motion blurring happening and there is a sound of air rushing past you, so you leap into the air - over the river - and down into some photorealistic trees that are swaying in the wind, with a crunch that can almost make you feel the impact, and a plume of dust rises around you.

That is one of the many just-so-happens moments that this game gives you, just moving from place to place. I am not even going to try explaining the really special things that Valley delivers. And it gives a bunch of cool ideas.

I must also note that Valley has a known issue of crashing during level loading. That said, it does save all player pickups, but level progress saves only happen at the start of a new level. Generally, this means running through an empty level again. This happened two or three times through my campaign. Otherwise, I had no other issues playing on Ubuntu Linux 16.04 with radeon drivers, even with a very old graphic card.

Valley is challenging and compelling. I keep looking forward to coming back for the worldbuilding, the story, the level design, and everything else. And I bought this at such a huge discount that I feel like I robbed the developers. This is one of the very few games that I have picked up on Steam that I would have really been completely satisfied to pay the full price. I just cannot say enough about how thrilled I am at getting a chance to play Valley.

Valley is an amazing, beautiful gaming experience. This is just one of the best games - the best first-person game - that I have ever played. The level design is perfect: it is the outdoors exploration sim that I have been craving. The gameplay is awesome - use your powers to improve life around you (imagine!) You are managing your environment to enrich and not to destroy, but not in a dull preachy way. It is just part of the excellent gameplay that makes you feel part of the environment as you are also moving through it. In the second half of the game, there is more typically FPS shooting, but the game rarely focuses on it. How to relay the feel of the gameplay... here is an example: you are in the wooded trail that leads down to a river, you run full speed down the hill, with the motion blurring happening and there is a sound of air rushing past you, so you leap into the air - over the river - and down into some photorealistic trees that are swaying in the wind, with a crunch that can almost make you feel the impact, and a plume of dust rises around you. That is one of the many just-so-happens moments that this game gives you, just moving from place to place. I am not even going to try explaining the really special things that Valley delivers. And it gives a bunch of cool ideas. I must also note that Valley has a known issue of crashing during level loading. That said, it does save all player pickups, but level progress saves only happen at the start of a new level. Generally, this means running through an empty level again. This happened two or three times through my campaign. Otherwise, I had no other issues playing on Ubuntu Linux 16.04 with radeon drivers, even with a very old graphic card. Valley is challenging and compelling. I keep looking forward to coming back for the worldbuilding, the story, the level design, and everything else. And I bought this at such a huge discount that I feel like I robbed the developers. This is one of the very few games that I have picked up on Steam that I would have really been completely satisfied to pay the full price. I just cannot say enough about how thrilled I am at getting a chance to play Valley.