The Lost Valley

5/10

the only reason to have this on your library is to support the devs but I don't think they are deserve it the game is like prototype and need a lot of works the sound system is so buggy and there is just 2 soundtrack and one of them is so bad and noisy
the gameplay so bad cause if you just miss with left click on mouse you will restart from beginning and if you miss click with F8 by accident you will go for main menu and go from beginning again
the graphics is bad and the far landscape is so blur and that so noisy

The Lost Valley

Positives:
+ Good graphics
+ Nice nature and design
+ One of the two songs (the enya wannabe)
+ The atmosphere in Winter
+ The wildlife

Negatives:
- Low FOV
- Extremely slow walking speed and no run function
- Cant disable head-bob
- The horizon suffers from myopia
- Some designer shortcomings
- You cant explore everything (invisible walls)
- No story, no voiceover, nothing to do but walk to the end
- Almost not a game, but more like a game engine demo
- If you press left mouse button the game resets
- Only two songs, and one of them is very repetitive
- Feels more like a early access than a finished game
- Extremely short (over in 15 - 20 minutes)

Total Score: 4.5/10

Played on Linux using Proton, Cry-Engine Game so works with maxed out Graphics settings for me.

It is just a simple walking Sim, no interaction with anything at all, Not much sound and 1 Music Track, Short Game 0.4 Hours to walk in summer time, you get the option to play either in summer or winter, not tested winter yet, slow paced but that might be because you just fell off a cliff on your bike, no running just walking, nice Graphics and not just Tree's, Grass, Rocks, It has some other things to look at, it has animal's you can look at, but that's about it, now do i recommend, yes i do, why?, because i'm strange and like walking sims, but as this one is really short i would (did) get it on sale.

I like walking sims, but I can't recommend this game at any price.

General comments:

• Game lasts ~30 minutes, which is pretty short even by walking sim standards (at least the ones I've played).
  
• The story in the game description is not mentioned in the game itself, including the end goal. I didn't read the description very well, so I was pretty surprised when I went to look at a boat and the game ended.
  

• The background music is a single track on repeat. It's nice at first, but it's annoying by the time it loops for the second or third time.
  
• Sound effects (e.g. waterfalls) don't fade in/out based on proximity; they cut in/out abruptly at a certain distance from the source.
  
• Player character's sounds are underwhelming. In most games, jumping into a pool of water will have a bit of audio oomph to go with it, but this one doesn't (sounds like it might just be the footstep sound again).
  
• The "running water" sound effect is pretty annoying by itself.
  
• Other than some ambient frog sounds, wildlife don't seem to make any other noise.
  
• The sound effects that do exist are overwhelmed by the background track being so loud.
  

• In an early pond, fish splashes are in sync and look more like magic effects than splashes.
  
• There's no animal variety, size or otherwise. For example, there are several chickens in the game, and as far as I could tell they're all the same rooster.
  
• There aren't any smaller grasses to fill space. The single larger grass is repetitive and its border with footpaths looks unnatural.
  
• There's one spot where you walk into a tunnel with some kind of "falling pebbles" effect. The walls to the left and right are both built from duplicating the same rock object and no effort is made to obscure it.
  
• In the same tunnel, the "falling pebbles" effect is also duplicated, but the 'ground' for that animation is higher than the actual ground, resulting in small rocks hovering in the air for a few seconds before disappearing.
  
• Dragonflies are on a loop where they disappear through the ground and come back up.
  
• Several trees clip badly through rocks. One specific tree is rooted in a rock, has its trunk visible for about two feet, and then the trunk clips entirely into another rock, causing branches to grow out of the rock face.
  
• There are several instances of incomplete/missing rock faces.
  
• There are several instances of grass/bushes floating in midair.
  
• For any given wall, there is probably a spot where there's grass or a fern that exists 80% inside it.
  
• In the train tunnel, there's one spot where two pieces of the wall look like they're overlapping/placed wrong, because there's flickering at the seam.
  
• The same flickering occurs for the train tracks themselves, both inside and after the tunnel.
  
• After the tunnel, there's a brick building using the same texture at drastically different scales. You end up with small, well-defined bricks adjacent to a wall of blurry bricks the size of your head. The same building has a broken/stretched texture on one corner.
  
• There's one spot where three trees were placed on top of a cliff. It's the same tree model (which is fine) but none of them were rotated. It's the same tree model at the same angle and scale, placed in a location where players can easily see the trees' profiles against a clear sky.
  
• There's some kind of fog effect that shows up or disappears occasionally, but it does so abruptly instead of fading in/out over a reasonable period of time.
  
• Several clutter rocks on the beach are floating midair.
  
[*] The object copy/pasted to build the dock was a pretty poor choice, because there's this piece of fabric between the boards that's unique enough to make the fact that it appears four times into a distraction.

Cannot leave a negative here. Played in 4K - absolutely stunning! Beautiful game and level of detail is amazing. As expected - short walking simulator where you can just enjoy yourself. Very Tonduc Bodur-ish.

Cons: no story and no narration.

Very short walking simulator with great music and decent graphics.

However there are a few problems to this game.

- Pricing is too high.
- There are a few things that are missing.
- The two game modes looks the same (summer and winter)
- There should have been at least more maps and some puzzle solving.
Look the game is great for what it offers but if you are someone that doesn’t like simulators then this game isn’t for you.

Precisely the kind of game which gives "walking simulators" a bad name. Shoddily slapped together, broken as fuck, and anything but relaxing to "play".

It's a good thing the Store page tells you that you begin the game as the victim of a bicycle accident, because the game itself certainly doesn't. You wake up on your back after allegedly falling off a cliff (!), get sluggishly to your feet, and casually stroll - not hobble or anything - along barely-existent paths which quickly give way to walking down steep waterfalls and all other manner of unfeasibly agile nonsense. Even crocodiles don't phase our intrepid wanderer: he simply walks right over them, before proceeding to walk across the surface of the body of water it is inhabiting. All hail the new Messiah, reborn after riding his fucking bicycle off a fucking cliff.

It wasn't long before, on my first playthrough, I got stuck in-between a waterwheel and some stairs I was foolishly trying to access. On my second playthrough, I worked out I wasn't supposed to climb said stairs at all, and instead found a cunningly-hidden path behind the building in question. Not long after this, I made the mistake of accidentally pressing the left mouse button, and magically found myself back at the beginning of the game.

That's quite enough shenanigans for THIS Messiah, I'm afraid. The game's menus might be difficult to negotiate, but I can still manage to find a "Quit" button when I need one.

If you've ever wondered why people defend other walking sims, just play one of those games - just about any of them, really - then play this one. You'll quickly work out what the others do right (i.e. at least SOME things), versus what this one does right (absolutely fucking NOTHING, apart from some decent graphics which the "devs" themselves aren't attributable to anyway). No vision, no imagination; not even an earnest-if-misguided attempt to create an atmospheric experience with minimal resources. Not even a vaguely passable "tech" demo, with remotely comprehensible level design. Feral chimpanzees could presumably "flip assets" with better results.

Avoid at all costs. Especially the one they're still asking on the Store page, two-and-a-half years after release. (Five dollars? Haha, nice one, fellas...good to see you at least have a sense of humour...)

Verdict: 2/10.

A pretty boring and glitchy "walk simulator" with some random animals and weather effects.
There's nothing else to do on this small map than walk (no run available!?) along a path till the end. At least there are some nice sceneries. There's also a very annoying issue when clicking the left mouse button: the map immediately restart at the beginning. The options menu not work correctly sometimes.
I saw a lot of better games build on the CryEngine!
It's not worth the full price.

Very short walking simulator with great music and decent graphics.

Since the game is on sale for 1,20 EUR I would say I can recommend it for collectors (who buy anyways every game) and hardcore walking simulator fans. For the rest, you can skip this one even for the sale price.

Why?:

* very short (15 minutes)
* graphics are cry engine, but nothing special in 2017
* weird scaling of objects and unsatisfactory pathing in the game
* very little walking simulator highlights, sure you get 2 to 3 pictures with lensflare out of it - standard
* no achievements
* no story
* blurry even with motion blur off

It looks good on the pictures on the store page, but it is too short to be recommended to regular players. I will give it a thumbs up though for hardcore walking sim fans. For the rest, it is a thumbs down.

Twitch Channel : https://www.twitch.tv/mrorange55
Youtube Channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1UE5TPoF0HX0HVpF_E4uPQ/videos?view_as=subscriber

Poor.
I'm a fan of walking simulators but this is exactly how not to do it.
If all you want is pretty environments then this game caters to you. If you want anything more than you will find this game severely lacking.
There is absolutely no interactivity. Nothing. Not even a door to open, even though there are a smattering of buildings throughout. The height of scripted events that trigger when you're nearby is an animal may run away.
There is no story, no exposition, and nothing to find to give any semblance of background as to what is going on. This is the game's biggest crime.
From what I could gleam the entirety of the game can be summed up as the main protagonist wakes up in a valley and tries to find his way to the sea to leave via boat. How he got there is not clear at all. Why he is leaving is not clear either. What is his motivation? There isn't even a narrator like drizzlepath had to add some semblance of story.
The game is also ridiculously short, completeable in 20-30 minutes or so. And even so there are some random jarring stutters throughout as the game loads up the next area.
But there are some glaring technical issues as well. Textures stutter in and all. Ambient sounds seems to be limited to set areas, so if you take a few steps forward ambient sound will cut-in/out. And some items in game have ridiculous amounts of shininess like the docks, which caused it to sparkle unnaturally so.
Also I would question some of the effects used. Like when you go through one cave in the game there is a truly bizarre water effect going on that breaks any immersion the game had managed to build up.

Avoid.

As a connoisseur of so-called "walking simulators", I've made it a point to acquire as many as possible. (You can view my Steam library for some of the examples.)

'The Lost Valley' caught my eye with its seemingly detailed visuals, so I decided to purchase it on the latest Steam sale. The description was enticingly vague, and I kept my mind open. Upon first starting it up, I found myself amongst some lush woodland scenery. CryEngine 3 is a pretty engine, and while the performance isn't as efficient as UE4, it ran acceptably maxed out on my hardware.

I walked along the path, stopping to look at flora and fauna...but soon realized it seemed rather bland. There's a difference between a cacophony of scenery thrown together to emulate nature, and a carefully crafted landscape. This, unfortunately, was a common thread running through the entire game. It seemed like a bunch of free engine assets pasted around, including canned (and sometimes glitched) animations of wildlife. There were a handful of scenes that were actually well-crafted, but everything in between rendered them flat.

I understand and will vehemently defend the efficacy of narrative games in the current gaming environment. Many criticize them as not being actual *games* because there are no enemies or goals, but I feel that the narrative experiences are a modern homage to the text-based adventures of old. But with 'The Lost Valley', there is absolutely no narrative, and the experience itself is marred by empty design.

If this game was free or $0.99, I could see it as a developer sharing their foray into engine work/environment building. It's really not bad in that sense. But $5 is far too expensive for such a thing. I would avoid this title unless it's at a deep discount.

EDIT: Also, there is a weird quirk upon which simply left-clicking restarts the entire game at the beginning. As in, if you keep wildly clicking it, the music will start to overlap in an ungodly manner.

This game is a demo of cryengine, theres no narrative, no sound track, no game mechanics.
In short words this game is just a way to win a quick buck from gamers.
please don't support this kind of developers.

By far the worst walking simulator I've ever played. There wasn't any story, no interraction with anything around you, and if you by a mistake managed to click left button on your mouse the game would restart - no matter how far into the game you were..

On top of that; restarting the game made the previous music stay where it were, and added a new irritating layer of the same music, NOT SYNCED, on top of the old one. It was like hearing a handful of children smashing random keys on a piano, while they're high on sugar. Really not pleasant, thank you.

Not a game in the slightest

Walking Simulator Perfected

I loved this "game" although it isn't a game YET. I did not like the negative reviews I read because they all complained that there wasn't anything to do. Well, I thought we all knew that going in.
There is so much already placed in here that the devs will open up to us, even crates which will surely be loot for us since there would be no other reason for them to be there. I just went exploring and found much to enjoy. Besides items, and things like turtles and frogs, blue dragonflies and flocks of birds, theres buildings and a water tower, a tree house with a broken latter which I'm looking forward to climbing up into.
There is more stuff besides. I glitched my way past an invisible barrier and fell off the top of a mountain. I thought I was going to die, there was blood, but I didn't, and found some stuff!
Well, I had a very good time. I'm going to love it farther along in the development, and the music is beautiful.
When I fell off the mountain I never could find a way out so I had to exit the game.
For five bucks why not buy it. Help the developer out to bring this game along. It will be worth it, to me anyway.
Hopefully they will never...EVER....put a zombie or monster in here. I'd like to have at least ONE game to just enjoy :)

What is that? No, seriously, what is that? Because what we have here is definitely not a game as it features no gameplay, no story, no characters, no environmental sounds, no voice acting, no custom models - nothing. What it has is absolutely ugly, badly mixed cacophony instead of music, but it can hardly be considered a plus.
Don't buy it, I repeat do not buy it. Even if it were free, it still wouldn't worth any attention.

...I should really stop buying these First Person Exploration games in hopes of another on as good as The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

...the demo is pretty, and I only payed 5 bucks for it, but theres really no point. Im not a developer or plan on making any games with Cryengine, so Im not sure what the point is.

Oh boy.... Allright. 4.49Euro spent for nothing.

This is not a game, it's a walking simulator. No story, no guidelines, no gameplay, nothing. You literally just walk around. It looks like someone just wanted to make a quick buck. AVOID this "game". I would write a complete review, but since the creator of this "game" didn't make any effort, i won't either.

This is a walking simulator and I knew that from the start. I usually enjoy them from time to time. This game on the other hand offers really nothing. You start at one point and end at another. There is no dialogue in the game so all you are doing is walking through the woods listening to the same 30 second song over and over again. It would have been nice to have had some interaction with the world as well. Being able to open some doors and look around at the cool looking buildings. But all you can do is wave at the buildings and walk on by. The game is only 5 bucks but I really can't recommend this game at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxB6oftruXo

Okay so...

Pros:
Good graphics, an interesting concept

Cons:
It's literally just a short demo using the Cryengine with borrowed stock music and sound effects.
The "music" (basically Enya) is annoyingly loud and cannot be turned off or even down.
There is also no control setup.
You are limited to walking, crouching and jumping. There is no interaction, with anything, not even doors or animals.
Whatever you do, do NOT click the left mouse button, it resets you to the beginning of the game... and to make matters worse, it starts a new music track that plays OVER the currently playing one which makes it sound absolutely horrible and even louder.
With the exception of a few animals, most do not have any proper AI and just loop an idle animation, sometimes in perfect synchronization with other animals around them.
And Finally... "Winter" mode, is LITERALLY just summer mode with snowflakes.

In short. Don't bother, at least not yet. If it's a work in progress, it needs a LOT more work.

As it stands, 4.5/10