Arcen games have just sent out some new screens and videos for their upcoming online co-op game A Valley Without Wind. A stark contrast from previous screens seen, the new images showcase a brutal looking world filled with lava and strange creatures - some as high as level 529! I think we're going to need our Strange Creature Slaying Knift +2 for this journey.
While there's not a ton of updates on the surface, the latest developer blog points us to a lot of behind the scenes enhancements for the PC title, which is still slated for a summer 2011 release. The biggest enhancement is no doubt the game's crafting system is in place.
Our system for crafting is really simple: in the crafting menu, you have a list of craftable materials, and you can select one to see all the possible recipes that involve that material, and whether or not you have all the scrap and any other craftable materials needed to make them.
Scrap doesn't have levels, but craftable materials do, and are more rare. When an item is created from a recipe, it has the average level of all the materials that went into it (often that's just one single material and a collection of level-less scrap).
This will include a lot of variations so that you can really customize your loadout based on what sorts of craftable materials you find (that way your loadout is a bit more self-directed compared to games like Diablo or Borderlands where you just get what the game gives you), but it's not completely open-ended in the way that something like Magicka is. And none of the recipes are secret or involve any fiddling with the interface, unlike Minecraft.
Inspiration from Magicka, though not as deep, makes this intriguing. Throw in some Minecraft and things just got interesting.
Screenshots can be seen on this page.