Throughout the history of video games, the act of climbing has been ever-present. We think of modern games like Jusant, Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy, Or even the recent Chained Together when we think of climbing games, but even platformers of old like the original Ice Climbers were tempting us with climbing to new heights and destroying us when we fall. Valley Peaks is a new game centered around the joys of climbing with a vibrant color palette and wholesome vibes.
Developed by Tub Club and Published by Those Awesome Guys, Valley Peaks is set in the region of, you guessed it, Valley Peaks. A micro-open world with nature in every direction commanded by 11 towering mountains. You play as a frog who is tasked by the company they work for to install radio towers on the tops of each of the mountains, a task that was being carried out by our father some time ago. As you install these radios, you will gain memories of your childhood that explain a bit of the backstory with this company and your father as well as get involved with several bite-sized stories involving the inhabitants of Valley Peaks.
While there is a story present in Valley Peaks, what’s there isn’t developed enough to ever become all that engaging. The story involving the company and your father is drip-fed to the player and isn’t very original. We won’t spoil anything here, but when a corporation is involved in doing something in or around nature, there are only a few ways a story like that tends to shake out, and sadly Valley Peaks doesn’t really shock in this regard. The bite-sized stories you get involved with along the journey are only a couple sentences at most that frame the side quests you go on, which usually involve finding someone’s lost item and returning it to them. The writing is wholesome and charming and even got a couple of laughs out of me, but there’s not a whole lot to sink your teeth into from a story perspective.
What Valley Peaks does have going for it is the gameplay centered around climbing. To go over some basics, the game is played entirely from a first-person perspective. The left and right triggers (mouse buttons on PC) control your left and right arms. You also have a jump button at the start. Early on, you will use these to climb some simple structures like small cliff faces and rock walls, combining moving your character, shifting handholds, and leaping for out-of-reach rocks to latch onto. Movement feels fluid and quick, aided by solid performance and smooth framerate.
While it may sound simple on paper, as the game progresses the mountains introduce new challenges and game mechanics that make each mountain ascent feel unique and fun. Loose rocks that crumble after holding on a short time, “traffic rocks” that can only be grabbed at certain times corresponding to specific flashing colors, energy orbs that allow you to double jump in the air, and powered minecart launchers are only a handful of different modifiers you will come across as you climb the valley’s many peaks. The threat of falling is an ever-present danger, but at the same time, once you have successfully climbed to the summit of a mountain, you get the very satisfying victory leap to the bottom! (Don’t worry, as you are a frog, fall damage does not exist.)
The game introduces and communicates these mechanics in smart ways. A new mechanic is typically introduced when you begin climbing a new mountain, either by another friendly frog describing it to you, or for you to find out on your own as you climb. Mountains each have 3 different routes to climb that are color-coded to denote their difficulty. Each route will utilize this new mechanic in some way. For example, the easy route might just have one or two crumbling rocks while the hard route will have you chaining multiple jumps between crumbling rocks. Due to the game’s colorful minimalistic art style, objects you can interact with clearly stand out from the surface of the mountain, so it’s never confusing to find where exactly you should be moving or jumping to along your journey to the top. I found myself constantly surprised seeing just how many creative new mechanics were introduced which made each mountain a joy to figure out, as well as feeling like a natural progression seeing old mechanics combined in new ways on the more challenging mountains.
Completing all three routes on a given mountain will reward you a climbing stamp. These stamps can be traded in for new gear and upgrades that enhance your movement abilities in significant ways. A jetpack will allow you to hover and aid in climbing, there are special watches that allow you to slow or speed up time, but one of my favorites have to be the explosives, which can be used to gain a large amount of height in a quick blast. Some stamps unlock the gear itself, while others will unlock upgrades for each piece of gear like extending the amount of time you can use that piece or increasing their effectiveness and utility. Some of these stamps can be purchased with currency found in game, but having upgrades tied to these stamps really incentivizes you to fully explore and conquer each mountain out there. It’s a fulfilling gameplay loop that is paced fairly well throughout the 8 hours it took me to finish the game.
After completing each route on a mountain, new challenges will appear in the form of completing the routes again but with strict time limits. These speed runs will test your dexterity along with how well you know the route you are climbing. Finding where you can save some time by utilizing shortcuts will be instrumental in besting these challenges. Further still, we came across an NPC that challenged us to climb the hardest route of a mountain using only one hand. These are further ways that Valley Peaks expands on the relatively simple climbing loop in fun and interesting ways.
As I mentioned above the game is set in a micro-open world, so when you aren’t climbing the various mountains, you are exploring the surrounding hills, rivers, and towns. There are several things you can find out in the world: gold mushrooms which act as currency, gears and bolts that allow you to repair broken bounce pads or zip lines as well as fuel canisters that improve other stats that allow you to use your gear, photographs that reveal a bit more backstory, and juice boxes and gacha capsules that unlock cosmetic customization options. You can interact with other frog NPCs in towns and on the trails, some have a small side quest for you to complete while others may just have a small statement to exclaim. You won’t be getting into deep conversations or forming bonds with these characters, but there are plenty of frogs to stumble across everywhere, even in some difficult-to-reach spots.
While the art style allowed for clear pathfinding on the mountains while climbing, out in the open world it was a bit harder to discern where certain points of interest or important NPCs were located at. Valley Peaks is a very colorful game and is generally pleasing to look at. However, at higher vantage points, the cloud effects and visual filters that give a sense of distance start to collide and make it hard to make out things in the distance that aren’t trees or other mountaintops. There is no compass in the game or on-screen markers during gameplay, which help keep the UI during gameplay clutter and distraction-free. NPC’s with an active quest have a marker on the map, but I found myself opening the map multiple times to orient my character’s view in the direction of a specific NPC and then setting off which felt a little clunky, not to mention I couldn’t always remember which NPC specifically I was traveling towards. This is the type of game that is begging for a beacon system where you can place your own points of interest and have a beacon out in the world to see, perhaps that can be added in a future update. The game does have a binocular mode that attempts to highlight some points of interest, but it inverts the colors in game and doesn’t exactly highlight enough things outside of stamp collectors to be all that helpful.
While the performance in Valley Peaks was solid, I did run into a few bugs while playing the game. Very infrequently, the game would eat a button input which would lead to some unintended mistakes. For example, I would be going for a large jump that would end in me falling, in an attempt to save myself I would try and pull out my glider to slow my fall but upon hitting the glider button it would fail to come out and to the bottom, I would fall. Similarly, on one occasion I did have the game soft lock on me. I spoke to an NPC on top of a mountain, and when looking over the edge, I saw another frog on a lower section of the mountain. When I talked to this frog, they had the same dialogue as the frog on the top of the mountain and I wasn’t able to exit the conversation in any way outside of forcing the game to quit.
These next two, I’m not entirely sure if they were bugs or not. Early on in the game, occasionally my progress on climbing a given route would reset. I couldn’t figure out what exactly was causing it until I had pinpointed that it was resetting when I was using my different pieces of gear. It was pretty frustrating as when it happened I just had to jump all the way back down to the bottom to start the climb over again. Later on in my playthrough, this stopped happening, so it might have been fixed with one of the several pre-launch patches. The other confusing thing that would occasionally happen was some areas would cause my character to gain the ability to jump in what felt like zero g. I am unsure if this was a mechanic that I completely missed an explanation for or if the physics were just acting silly. All in all while I did experience these bugs they honestly weren’t such a big issue that it detracted from the overall experience in any major way. I was still just as compelled to hop back in and keep climbing.
Overall I had an enjoyable time with Valley Peaks. Its core gameplay is fun and engaging, the presentation is solid for the most part, and for being set in a micro-open world, the game is paced well. There are some bugs here and there and I had hoped some of the other areas like the story or the side quests got the same level of depth that the climbing mechanics received. But if you are looking for some wholesome fun climbing in nature as a frog, give Valley Peaks a look. Valley Peaks is available on PC and Nintendo Switch. A code was provided by the publisher for review.
