Valley of Shadow

I am no longer walking through the Valley of Shadow and I feel like I’ve completed a marathon. With tricky puzzles, no option to skip, and no walk through, this is an accomplishment! Woohoo!!! At times, I wanted to quit, but I am so glad that I persevered to the end of this deeply emotional experience. Valley of Shadow has two aspects. On the one hand, it is a journey through multiple temples with many gates that are opened by using light, shadow, color, fire, and timing. You have a wand with 3 spells (light, force, fire) that is used to craft solutions. Each temple introduces a new mechanic, and towards the end, you are using a combination of spells. On the other hand, it is a walking simulator that documents a path out of the trauma of family dysfunction. This is narrated as a conversation between Anthony and his therapist and includes exploring his childhood home and memories. There are collectibles along your path (family photos, floppy disks, VCR tapes) and clue-based puzzles to retrieve classic game cartridges. The game auto saves on exit. While your collectibles from your current location are saved, your progress on the specific gate is not. I was very careful to make su…

At its core, [i]Valley of Shadow[/i] plays as a blend between a walking simulator and a puzzle game, with most of the time being spent on solving room-sized puzzles while traversing through several temples with unique mechanics. The game is narrated from the perspective of a patient during a cognitive behavioral therapy session. This patient, Anthony, is the main author of the game and at the same time its main protagonist, the character who the player controls as they solve puzzles, and whose tragic past is slowly unraveled as the player goes deeper into the temples. Just like it often happens when exploring the various rooms of the subconscious mind during a therapy session, different fragments of memories resurface, some of them being comforting, while others being, as expected from a therapy session, quite traumatic. Anthony’s journey through the temples of his mind is a symbol of his journey of dealing with these childhood traumas, a way of learning how to embrace past experiences and finding how to heal from them. [i]Valley of Shadow[/i] was created together with Anthony’s two siblings, Nicholas and Maria, who we often see in the hundreds of childhood pictures attached to…

This game is important.  The idea of an autobiographical game - either explicitly autobiographical or just based on the events/life/feelings of the developer(s) - isn't new, but this is the first and only game I've ever seen that is explicitly biographical not just for an individual but for a whole family.  This game moved me deeply. You 'play' as Anthony - a real person! named Anthony! - as he works through his feelings about his family and a death of one of the members.  You meet his younger brother Nick and sister Maria via photographs and home movies, and these are real photos and videos from Anthony, Nick, and Maria's childhoods.  You work through puzzles involving light, etc, that feel very "classic video game" in environments that recall games of the 90s-00s, with lots of little references to games of that time. The oscillation between the challenge of these puzzles (and they get difficult!) and psychological themes of addiction, neglect, and suicide gave me a little whiplash, but in a way that made me think of escaping into games as a kid, when my time wasn't my own, and parents and school yanked my right of whatever book or game I'd escaped to. Playing through this g…

Valley of Shadow is great for fans of puzzle games who also like to experience and immersive story. THE PUZZLES This game has three types of puzzles: 1) Use various powers to escape rooms. The main mechanic of the game is using a staff with a series of gems, all with different powers to manipulate the room. There was a good balance of easier and harder levels and the mechanics were introduced at a good pace. 2) Unravel the story, with hidden clues throughout in the forms of the developers' actual home movies and childhood photos. You don't need to find all these clues to progress, but the more you find the more story you get. No matter what, I bet the mid-game reveal will surprise you! 3) Decode a secret language. You could finish the game without cracking the code and translating anything, but I recommend getting out a pen and paper and translating throughout the game. THE STORY The main characters are self-inserts for the developers and the story is based on their own family trauma. The authenticity of this game shines through because of how personal and how honest it is. There are no heroes or villains. The characters are complex because they are real. Heavy topics that are…

Let me tell you... This game would have had a significantly less emotional impact on me a year ago. 10/10 would recommend a good cry.

Every once in a while, a game comes out that leaves you feeling its effects for days on end. Valley of Shadow is one of those games. At its core, it's a first person puzzle game with some unique mechanics that rely on perspective, logic, and observation. It teaches you the puzzle language without explicit instruction, instead utilizing tutorial puzzles that teach the mechanics in their simplest forms. As the game progresses, you are presented with increasingly more difficult challenges, culminating in a clever twist of the puzzle ideas as they begin to weave their way from fantasy into reality. But Valley of Shadow is more than just a puzzle game. Underlying the puzzles is a deeply personal narrative that aims to tell the story of childhood trauma, family tragedy, depression, self-destruction, and rebirth. It connects you to a family's true story like no other game I have ever played. It is beautiful, sad, horrible, and wonderful all at the same time. If you want a game that will leave you sitting in silence for minutes on end as you contemplate the journey you just experienced, then please give Valley of Shadow a try. You can see the love and dedication that went into it…