Valdis Story - An Indie Metroidvania

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Hello everyone! Do you remember Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo? I´m sure that name brings back many super great memories to the most super veteran players. That feeling of loneliness as you were exploring an unknown and dangerous world full of mysteries, the satisfaction of watching you character grow as you advanced through the adventure... It was just... well, just super. Back then, on top of being acclaimed by the critics of its time, Super Metroid set the base for a new hybrid genre that mixed elements typical from other genres such as the action/platform and RPG games, which would eventually evolve into some of the modern action/adventure games that we can see nowadays. In fact, the success of Nintendo´s classic was such that it even managed to convert other classics of the time to its “particular faith”, such is the case of Konami´s also classic series Clastlevania and its timeless classic Symphony of the Night, which would serve as the start for a series of “Metroidvanias” that spawned across different platforms conquering public and critics alike, making many players almost completely forget the original arcade roots of the series of the Belmonts in their eternal war against Dracula that Spanish developer MercurySteam tried to recover in their recent Lords of Shadow trilogy, but in this new entry I´m not going to talk about Metroid or Castlevania, enough has been said already about these two legendary titles, instead I´m going to talk about an indie game that follows the legacy of these classics, and boy believe me when I say it does indeed do a good job when trying to keep up with these two titans of the gaming industry. I´m talking about Valdis Story Abissal City.

We will face several bosses in the sunken city.

Developed by indie developer Endless Fluff Games, Valdis Story belongs to that recent generation of games founded trough the new crowdfunding method on Kickstarter, a website dedicate to that method that is becoming more and more popular and that has helped to found some really interesting projects such as the new entry in the classic RPG series Shadowrun, Keiji Inafume´s new game called Mighty No. 9, the charming Mercenary Kings that we could see in PC and PS4, the recent Pillars of Eternity, a game that is being praised by the critics all over the world and that is called to be the spiritual successor of the classic Baldur´s Gate, or even the virtual reality goggles Oculus Rift, that have the support of some of the most influential names of the game industry, such a John Carmack, one of the precursors of the FPS genre and one of the minds after classics such as Wolfenstein, Doom or Quake among others. As I was saying at the beginning, Valdis Story in action/adventure 2D game much in the vein of Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, offering us a classic style adventure that mixes action, platforms and exploration elements. The story of Valdis Story is a story about a story that goes into a story to story the story and story the story of the story... sorry about all that story... let me start again. Valdis Story puts us in the role of Wyatt, and warrior sailing the seas looking for his father when suddenly some giant monsters attack his ship and sink it, dragging him down to a mysterious and forbidden sunken city, but far from being safe, soon Wyatt will find out that the city is actually a battlefield in which a cruel battle is being held by the armies of Alagath, the Goddess of Light, and Myrgato, the Goddess of Darkness. Wyatt will have to try to find a way to escape from the city while he discovers the secrets behind the war that is taking place in the city, for the angels are not as angelical as they could seem, and the demons are not as demonic as they could seem. That is the story of Valdis Story, and with this story... Valdis Story... I´m really sorry about all this story thing... will immerse us (literally) in a beautiful fantasy world that has been recreated by using gorgeous, I mean, GORGEOUS, hand-drawn graphics full of detail to bring the game´s world to live, which I´m sure will please all those pixel lovers like me. The game will let us choose between 4 different characters:

Wyatt

Wyatt is a wandering warrior in search of his missing father. For the better part of his early childhood he was raised in Myrgato’s dark army, and trained as a swordsmith under his father, General Cadeyrn. After Cadeyrn refused to commit his soul fully to the dark goddess, an order of execution was sent out for both of them. Wyatt was separated from Cadeyrn during their escape and has been searching for him since.


 
 
Reina

As an orphan raised in an Alagathian monastery, Reina displayed great potential for soul manipulation. Normally the monastery only trained males to become angelic Zealots and Priests but an exception was made. They began grooming Reina to be the next golden child. Hundreds of human souls were prepared to be manipulated into Reina, but before that day came she met Wyatt and they have been together ever since.

Vladyn

Vladyn’s left arm is the result of an angelic experiments to imprison powerful demon souls. Imprisoned souls are unable to return to Myrgato after their bodies are destroyed. Hearing the voices of the demons trapped within their bodies usually drove containment subjects mad, but Vladyn listened to them. The more he listened, the more he felt that there was a truth hidden from both sides of the war. Vladyn escaped in order to find this truth out for himself.


 


Gilda

Gilda’s family once held high standing within the ranks of the demon army. Her family name was ruined when her grandfather allegedly fled from a battle. She was very close to her grandfather. Even as other family members distanced themselves from him, she remained at his side up until the day he was executed. The morning of his death he told her to seek out the exiled General Cadeyrn, because he knew the truth behind the events that unfolded on the battlefield.




As you can see, there are all types of characters for all kinds of tastes, each with their own unique background, motivations and skills, which helps to add replay value to the game. The gameplay of Valdis Story rests on two main pillars: combat and exploration. Regarding exploration, as it happened in Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, we will be able to freely explore a world divided into areas. While we will be able to access many of the areas right from the beginning of the adventure, we won´t be able to explore some others till we obtain first the necessary skill to do so, like for instance the double-jump skill. This will have the players revisiting old areas in order to discover new paths they couldn´t follow before in order to discover new secrets. Each area will be filled up with enemies, tough final bosses and secret areas that will allow us to obtain all kind of items to help our character or create new items, for the game also has its own crafting system.

The complete map

As for the combat, we will basically have two types of attacks: physical and magical, which will vary depending on the character we select to play the adventure. As it happened in Symphony of the Night, every time we defeat an enemy we will obtain experience points, allowing us to level up, but Valdis Story will go a bit more far, allowing us also to unlock and learn new skills using the skill points we obtained, on top of being able to improve the four basic stats of our character: strength, intelligence, agility, and luck. The skills we will be able to learn will be divided in 3 main branches: Warrior, which will allow us to obtain attack skills, Guardian, which will allow us to obtain defensive skills, and Savior, which will allow us to obtain magical skills. On top of all these skills, we will be able to improve our character stats with the several pieces of equipment that we will find scattered through all the adventure like it also happened in the adventure of Alucard.

We will be able to equip our character with several pieces of equipment.

We will be able to unlock and learn new skills as we level up.

We will find lots of treasures as we explore the city.

As you can see, Valdis Story (and it´s story... not again!) is quite a complete game in all its aspects, following strictly many of the rules that any “Metroidvania” should follow, which surely will satisfy the fans of this genre. Judging from the final result, it is really hard to believe this game was developed by just a two-men (or man and woman) team, and although surely the game has its flaws, its many good qualities make of him a more than worthy tribute to those old classics that many of us grew up with. If you feel like playing a classic style action/adventure game and remember old times, you really should give a try to this small hidden gem of the indie game scene, I´m sure it won´t disappoint you. You can buy the game on the Steam website: http://store.steampowered.com/app/252030/. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9I8ff_HiRw