Valley of Shadow News

Take a breath...

We've published a brand new demo, just in time for the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase which starts this Thursday! Tons of amazing puzzle games will be available to demo, and on steep discounts during the run of the festival, so be sure to check it out.

And if you haven't already delved into the Valley of Shadow, now's the perfect time. The new demo is now identical to Chapter 1 of the base game, with an updated level of polish and optimization. Brace yourself for a deeply emotional story, a series of head-scratching puzzles, and try the game out now!

And remember, as always...

this belongs.

This is a small patch that adds duplicates of all photos found outside of temples to the inside of the temples. This makes it easier to collect all photos in the game in a single playthrough.

The following in-temple rooms now have photos:

• "Elevated Crystal"
  
• "Islands Apart"
  
• "Missing Crystal"
  
• "Fresh Meat"
  
• "Evernight"
  
• "Jedi"
  
• "Wings"
  

We are thrilled to be participating in Steam's October Next Fest, which starts in less than 24 hours! To celebrate, we'll be livestreaming never-before-seen footage of the game with developer commentary at the following times:

• Tuesday, October 15 @ 1PM EDT: Chapter 2 Livestream - Get a glimpse of the second chapter of the story, learn about the second spell in the game, Force Missile, and see some of the puzzles you can solve with it!
  
• Thursday, October 17 @ 7PM EDT: Chapter 3 Livestream - Watch the story start to come to a head as we show off the third and final magical spell in the game - but that one you'll have to come and see for yourself!
  

Don't forget to wishlist the game now and come say hi during our livestream. We hope to see you there!

The Cerebral Puzzle Showcase is here, and we've released an updated demo just in time for it! Solve puzzles, experience our autobiography, and let us know what you think!

Here's a taste of what's new in the demo:

• Complete graphical overhaul of the opening scene
  
• 5 completely new puzzles, bringing the total in the demo up to 34 (large & small)
  
• Add a few hidden previews of future puzzle mechanics to the Light Temple
  
• Remove speed slowdowns from the opening scene
  

If you enjoy the game and want more, we're always looking for more playtesters! Join our discord and we'll let you know when a new build is ready to be played: Valley of Shadow Discord

This is a small bugfix patch for the Chapter 2 beta. If you're interested in playtesting it for us, please join our discord and we'll get you set up with it!

Here are the fixes:

• Floppies can no longer get stuck on the screen. This would happen if you shot a floppy statue and then quickly exited the room; the room you just left would be destroyed, taking the statue's script with it, and that's the script that controlled the floppy! To fix this, the coroutine has been attached to another gameobject that sticks around, instead of the statue.
  
• Fix missile pathfinding in the final puzzle. I don't have a good excuse here; the pathfinding nodes (we use A*) were just not set up correctly. This was mostly due to the rapid iterating of that room I did when putting it together.
  
• Missiles can no longer be shot at a moving block. Our system currently doesn't handle moving pathfinding nodes, because it doesn't need to in 99% of cases. A moving block was outside of that 99%. So rather than implement any entire moving-node system, you just can't shoot missiles at moving blocks anymore.
  
• Blocks now move the player out of the way if they are standing in its path. This was already the case for the majority of blocks, but some of them used older prefabs that I missed when I implemented the push-player-out-of-the-way logic.