While out on a walk this evening, I was listening to the soundtrack of a game that I really love, played a lot some years ago… and haven't really touched since. That game is A Valley Without Wind.
As my thoughts wandered during my little 2km circuit of the Common, I started to think about why I haven't really played it much since (checks dates on Achievements) 2020? No, I definitely played it well before that. Mid-2010s. They probably added Achievements later after some entitled little prick on Steam got pissy that they couldn't have their meaningless shinies. (checks blog) Ah. 2012. Fuck me.
Anyway, before I got distracted, what was my point? Oh, right, the reason why I haven't played this all that much since 2012… and a brief return in 2020, apparently. I think it's because A Valley Without Wind is one of those games that there is no real "end" to. You have a long-term objective to complete, yes — defeating an Overlord — but once you do that, the game continues. There is a never-ending stream of Overlords to defeat, of gradually increasing difficulty, but, as far as I am aware, no way to "win"; no way to "beat" the game completely.
As time has gone on, for one reason or another, I have drifted away from games like this, and I'm not entirely sure why, because it's certainly not because I don't enjoy them. Over the years, I've had a lot of fun with various types of "freeform" experience, ranging from Starflight on Atari ST through SimCity on SNES, SimCity 2000, SimCopter, The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 on PC, and, yes, A Valley Without Wind. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I absolutely adored A Valley Without Wind when I first started playing it.
There was just something about it that… resonated with me. It was probably a combination of things: the janky but creative gameplay; the sense of emergent narrative; the chiptune-esque music; the baffling aesthetic which looked like half the team wanted to make an Amiga game and the other half knew what "Super VGA" meant. I played that game a lot when I first got it, although Steam claims I've only played it for 10 hours. I'm pretty sure the bulk of my playtime was before Steam started recording how long you'd played something.
But yeah. I haven't gone back. And I think the reason is that knowledge that it doesn't end. There's no way to "finish" the game, and thus it feels like there's never a good time to start it. This is a silly way to think about it, of course; there are lots of really good games that never end, and if I thought this about all of them, I'd never play any of them!
Weeeelll… I kind of don't. Y'see, I find finishing games enormously satisfying, and I love seeing the variety of different ways that games handle a narrative and/or mechanical finale sequence. Given that my tastes tend to skew towards the narrative-centric RPG end of things, you can see how I might find it tricky to figure out how to fit in a game like A Valley Without Wind. It's easy to fall into a trap of feeling that these games have no "point"; that it's not worth starting them if you can't finish them.
And yet I'm conscious that I'm deliberately depriving myself of things that I know I enjoy. Focusing on one or two "Big Games" at a time is certainly a good way to get through your library and, over the long-term, have a range of experiences that are both broad and deep. But it certainly doesn't hurt to punctuate those Big Games that have a definitive beginning, middle and end with something that just… doesn't end.
I mean, I have no problem spending an evening playing arcade games. Some of those never end. Even the ones that do are built to be replayed. And so why am I holding myself back from playing games that I know I like?
Perhaps I just need to make more time for experiences like this, and stop worrying about whether or not it's ever the "right" time to play something in particular. If I'm in the mood to play something, just play the damn thing!
Aren't brains fun? We're talking about something that is supposed to be relaxing entertainment here, and here I am, agonising and stressing over it. I need to stop doing that and just do what feels right, fun and just plain nice in the moment.
I need to go and have a bath as I'm stinky and sweaty after walking 2km in what turned out to be an incredibly humid evening. But after that, y'know what? I might just fire up A Valley Without Wind for the first time in six years. And realise that I have almost certainly completely forgotten how to play it.
(Aside: you can finish A Valley Without Wind 2, and in many ways it's a better game, with a belter of a theme song. But there's something I've always just really, really liked about the first one.)
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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