Indie Game Sales, Bundles, And AVWW Stuff

Big things happening these days. A Valley Without Wind has seen several more additions and refinements over the past week as we approach the 1.1 (and first official) update for the game. We also have a pretty cool announcement we've been sitting on for a few days that hopefully we'll be able to share before the weekend, or at least by early next week. We'll see.

One press item we wanted to highlight regarding AVWW: Vagary TV's Indie Game Review podcast. In the inaugural episode the game is reviewed by the two hosts and then Chris joins for the interview portion.

Other happenings in the indie world we wanted to quickly mention:

The Because We May week has kicked off, where developers can and have freely reduced (or in a few cases increased) the prices on their games. There's a ton of indie devs taking part, and although we're not actively involved, you can be sure we're passively participating by pricing our games at their normal price during the week; because we may. ;)

Our pal Gnome points us to the Bundle In A Box Adventure Bundle. That goes through June 6th and includes a bunch of solid indie adventure games such as Gemini Rue and Size Five's Zombie Cow efforts. It also has The Sea Will Claim Everything, which people keep mentioning how awesome it is though I haven't had a chance yet to play.

Here's the press that's come in for Valley over the past few days:

Armless Octopus -- A Valley Without Wind Review: Beware of The Wind

Dark Zero -- A Valley Without Wind Mac Review

Singju Games -- Review: A Valley Without Wind for PC

Gamer's guide to Life -- Review: A Valley Without Wind

Mash Those Buttons -- A Valley Without Wind [Review]

[VIDEO] A Valley Without Wind - First Impressions (Portuguese)

[VIDEO] A Valley Without Wind Part 3 and Part 4 (Russian)

More PAX East 2012 Coverage For A Valley Without Wind

PAX East coverage for A Valley Without Wind continues to roll in...

Just Press Start's Jeff Ortloff got the full tour of the Arcen Booth, posting audio interviews with both Chris and Pablo.

Gameinpublic posted the first ten minutes of the indie game talk I took part in. This was day two (we did a similar talk with different devs each day of the conference).

Andrew Whipple III of Gamer's guide to Life seems very pleased we're fleshing out a title in the sidescrolling action genre.

Patrick Lindsey put together a solid preview of the game over on BeefJack as well.

The Mash Those Buttons guys talk about the game for a decent chunk of their PAX East podcast.

Luigi Guarnuccio of Gamers Haven called AVWW 'a gem of a game' in his preview.

Matthew Jay discovers there's more to the game than what can be gathered at first glance in his preview over on Snackbar Games

OnLiveFans' Jeremy Burg mentioned us as one of the gems he got to play on the show floor in his round-up of the event.

Finally, GiantBomb snapped and posted a shot of the Arcen Games booth, check out those sweet banners. :)

Oh, one last item: 2nd Opinion Podcast's Chris Dunham will be live streaming A Valley Without Wind today at 3:45 PM ET for a good couple of hours. Tune in then to his Twitch.TV channel for a longer form, on-the-fly look at the game.

PAX East 2012 Coverage For A Valley Without Wind

We spent much of our time at PAX East chatting it up with press, filling interview appointments and having them take a quick tour of A Valley Without Wind.

Here's the coverage to come about from our trip to Boston thus far:

John Polson interviews Chris in an excellent piece on IndieGames.com entitled Indie Devs Weigh in on Imitating Versus Innovating.

Platform Nation's Gaming Hands On Quick Hits touches on AVWW's surprising amount of depth.

Nearly 15 minutes of Front Towards Gamer's latest Gametwerp Podcast is taken up by a live interview with Chris.

The intriguing Ditto Monster stopped by for an enjoyable and surprising interview with Chris.

Anthony of TryIndie was trying his backside off all weekend, providing a ton of coverage for us. He has written up interviews with both Chris and Pablo, plus recorded some video footage of the indie game dev panel I submitted and participated in.

Zach Martin of PikiGeek apparently enjoyed his time with AVWW on the first day. He went and published his preview just hours later. Awesome that we caught his attention!

We made Trouble Thinking's list of The Stuff You Should Have Checked Out.

The Gamer's Guide To Life Channel took a short test drive of the game, as well as recording a live interview with Chris on the show floor.

Thrifty Nerd's preview concludes that they can't wait for the April 23rd launch.

Lastly, we were also glad to finally meet Nick Puleo of Co-Optimus. We have several other interviews and coverage still in the works with other outlets—so keep your eyes peeled for those in the coming weeks.

Just Press Start Podcast And Gnome's Lair Interview

With A Valley Without Wind emerging out of over a month of heavy construction and significant changes, we're entering a phase where the game is settling into a stable enough state for us to start chatting with the press about it once more. This week we've had a couple new interviews hit:

Chris and I had an excellent time getting together with the gents at Just Press Start for a chat. In their latest podcast we discuss our games (specifically AVWW) give a bit about our backgrounds, and touch on various other topics.

Additionally, our friend Konstantinos Dimopoulos of Gnome's Lair has posted an interview where I talk with him about the current state of Valley, how we've reached this point, and where we hope and expect it to go now that we can see a bit of light coming from the end of the tunnel in regards to 1.0.

We're working steadily on some major items as far as providing new/updated media and info for everyone to check out. Stay tuned for that in the next week or two.

New Interviews, Previews, and LP Videos

So much has happened since we launched public beta for A Valley Without Wind back in late September. In some respects it feels like it's been out forever, when really we've just reached three weeks. It's been fantastic to have anyone interested finally able to play the game. We've received both a wonderful response as well as excellent feedback from players and press alike in such a short amount of time.

A couple of Arcen Games/AVWW items we'd like to direct you to, including a couple of new interviews. Chris chats comprehensively with UsedGameReviews in a just released piece, and Arcen is featured in Play Tribune's Developer Chat audiocast (where Chris and I babble on for over an hour about indie gaming plus all the aforementioned.)

Plenty of Valley-specific stuff below as well. Thanks to all who took the time to talk with us and/or take a look at our game.

Previews/Impressions

[Violent Gamer] A Valley Without Wind Beta Impressions
[Nightmare Mode] Beta Impressions: A Valley Without Wind
[Dealspwn] A Valley Without Wind Beta Impressions | Procedurally Generated Genre Smasher
[Quick Save Podcast] A Valley Without Wind Beta/Demo (8:00-12:00)

Videos

Hold [RESET] Gaming: A Valley Without Wind - Beta - First Look
Hyfrydle32: Let's Play A Valley Without Wind
Onemegatongamer: I will beat a valley without wind
A Valley Without Wind: Beta Gameplay

Arcen Games on The Grey Area Podcast

Chris Park and I sat down with Jenesee of The Grey Area Podcast for an in-depth chat on A Valley Without Wind, gaming in general, indie development, and of course all things Arcen Games as well. You should definitely set aside the 90 minutes for a listen; it was a wonderfully casual conversation with such a prepared and professional host guiding the ship!

The show's 26th episode "An Interview Without Wind" is available to listen to right now. Follow The Grey Area Podcast on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Jordan Rivas Interviews Chris Park

Chris recently got interviewed by Jordan Rivas. Talks about Tidalis and the future of Arcen Games (secrets). It makes a good listen, so download it and slap it on the iPod, or click below on that page to stream it right now.

Three Moves Ahead Episode 37 -- Chris Park and AI War: Fleet Command

Three Moves Ahead is the official podcast of Flash of Steel, and commonly features really high quality discussion of strategy games for hardcore gamers, and interviews with industry giants -- Brad Wardell, Soren Johnson, and others.  Episode 37 features Troy Goodfellow and Tom Chick talking with Chris Park, the lead designer of AI War about the state of the game, how some of its more unique aspects came about, and what is planned for the future.  There's also a fairly good bit of discussion of launching a new indie game and how that went for AI War, in addition to the more design-related discussions.

Listen To the Podcast

techZing 10 - AI War

"Justin and Jason talk with Christopher Park, founder of Arcen Games and developer of a space-based RTS game called AI War: Fleet Command, about how he was able to release a sophisticated computer game in under seven months and create a formidable artificial intelligence in only a matter of weeks. The discussion also covers the marketing of an independent game, cooperative game play, multi-threading, optimizing .NET, LINQ, GPUs, SlimDX and the future of artificial intelligence."

Listen to this podcast on techZing!