Let\u2019s get this out of the way right now. The Vale from Falling Squirrel is one of the greatest audio games of all time. It stands with Blind Drive, having features that separate it from the pack of audio games out there. It raises the bar for what is possible in audio games, and shows just how far the subgenre has come. The Vale, man. It\u2019s good. Let me tell you why.<\/p>\n
The Vale\u2019s gameplay is very, very, very inspired by A Blind Legend, but don\u2019t let that put you off in any way. The Vale takes that concept and multiplies it by 1000. It sports RPG elements, (equippable and sometimes modifiable gear, multiple weapons, a small magic system), that a Blind Legend didn\u2019t possess. And while it has similar combat, (right stick to swing your sword left, right, or center), it also has explorable towns, side questing, and other things I’ll get to later. That\u2019s not a bad thing, though. Make no mistake, a Blind Legend is also a good game, and iterating has been a thing in games since forever. This was the natural progression, and the Vale does a smashing job of it.<\/p>\n
Honestly though, the gameplay mechanics are only part of this equation. There\u2019s so much good here. The overall audio design, the use of 3D audio, the little things like how the game often doesn\u2019t cheat when an NPC moves away from you. In a few cases, they don\u2019t disappear for quite a long time, and can be followed. I don\u2019t care that I can no longer interact with them at this stage, but the fact that I could still see in which general direction they\u2019re headed is cool to me. And that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n
The voice acting in the Vale\u2026 It\u2019s insane! Of course, lots of that comes from the fact that Falling Squirrel pulled no punches here. You have voice actors from video games like Far Cry 3 and 5, and even TV actors from shows like The Expanse. In an audio game! And all of them, seriously all of them, do a fantastic job, with some truly standout performances amongst them. Dennis the Traveling Merchant may low key be one of the best characters in the game. Just my opinion, but that\u2019s a solid, solid performance.<\/p>\n
And then there is the quiet, mostly subtle use of player choice mechanics. This one really got to me, because it\u2019s implemented in such cool ways. I won\u2019t spoil anything here, but let me just say that it doesn\u2019t just matter what obvious choices you make. Which actions you take, which characters you speak to and which you ignore, which areas you visit and which you don\u2019t, and even the order in which you do all these things, matters in the Vale. Full disclosure here, you can\u2019t change the ending, but little bits of malleability sprinkled all throughout the journey give the game tremendous replay value. Trust me, once you start noticing your affect on the world, you will want to play the game more than once.<\/p>\n
I think that\u2019s nearly all I can say about the Vale without spoiling things. I will add that the game will take you from 4 to 6 hours to complete depending on how much exploring and side questing you do, but when you factor in your replays, you could spend a good 15 to 18 hours in total. There is just nothing about this game that isn\u2019t done well. Even the marketing is spot on, as mainstream gaming media and content creators are picking up on it, which is just wonderful to witness. I was truly honored to be part of the beta team for the Vale, and I hope that you feel it has the polish we tried to give it. The Vale is available now on Steam, ich.io, and yes, Xbox consoles! So if you\u2019ve been on the fence, or haven\u2019t heard of it, or would just like to try out an audio game, please pick up the Vale. I\u2019m confident you won\u2019t regret it. Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let\u2019s get this out of the way right now. The Vale from Falling Squirrel is one of the greatest audio games of all time. It stands with Blind Drive, having features that separate it from the pack of audio games out there. It raises the bar for what is possible in audio games, and shows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[36,79,427,121,209,426,91,35],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-accessibility","tag-audio-games","tag-falling-squirrel","tag-pc","tag-review","tag-the-vale","tag-video-games","tag-xbox"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandoncole.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}