Mountains and Valleys

All pages belonging to Mountains and Valleys use the MV prefix.

Mountains and Valleys is a game concept from the SomethingSoft Unofficial Dev Team. It is a light-hearted fantasy game that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The game focuses around the princess Nadine of the Mountain Kingdom, who, after seeing the court's only knight slip on a banana peel, fall into the moat, and drown, sets off to rescue Ashlynne, the princess of the Valley Kingdom.

Basic Story Overview

Princess Ashlynne of the Valley Kingdom has been kidnapped by Wayne Domicraw, an evil inventor. Victor Steel, the only knight in all the land, is tasked with rescuing her, but dies of an accident, leaving the rescue to Princess Nadine, of the Mountain Kingdom.

In order to rescue Ashlynne, Nadine must travel the land and seek out four evil Machinations. Each holds a piece of a key to Wayne's Death Fortress, which Nadine must then storm. She should probably also kill Wayne, but the storming part is the most important.

Objects of the Game

Defeat Wayne Domicraw, free the princess, and live happily ever after, though not necessarily in that order.

Concepts and Motivations

This game is intended as a sort of throwback to the golden age of PC RPGs. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, graphics technology was advancing very slowly and game designers had time to really focus on story and mechanics. Since then, graphics are all that matter, and that stinks.

Mountain and Valleys will not have great graphics. I'll being doing at least 90% of the artwork myself, so that means it definitely won't be great, but the goal here is not to make a stunning visual masterpiece; it's to make a game that's fun, big, and infinitely replayable.

The game should feel like what all of those Golden-Age games were striving for, but that the technology of the time just couldn't quite achieve. So open-world as much as possible. The game world doesn't actually have to be all that big; it just has to feel big, and not have any obstacles.

A lack of obstacles is the second concept. I have never been a fan of objective-delaying gameplay (the old "you can't go here until you've done this" approach). I think it's silly, personally, and players should be allowed to skip whatever they please. A good game should punish players for straying off the path, not build walls to keep them on it.

Mountains and Valleys has a fairly linear story, but the nature of the game allows the player to skip parts of it. The storytelling is built around a direct "show not tell" mentality; each objective is meant to show you a part of the story. If you don't need it, don't do it.

Of course, the player cannot just run straight ahead to the end boss. The price you pay for straying off the path is ending up in high-level areas without appropriate gear. The way the game is set up, you won't even be able to hit monsters higher-level than you.

But the reward for straying off the beaten path is finding hidden areas and secrets. This might as well be "Easter Egg: The Game!" since that is my favorite part of game design. The story is deliberately left simple because I'd rather focus on making the game fun to explore.

Details

• MV Quest Lines
• MV Combat
• MV Magic
• MV Design Doc
• MV Areas
• MV Story
• MV Characters
• MV Subway System
• MV Dialogue
• MV Potions
• MV Enemies
• MV Brain Dump
• MV Kickstarter

This wiki is effectively a dump from a dozen or so word-documents; it is presently not properly formatted and crudely organized.