A great game doesn’t need to be hundreds of hours long, and games like Firewatch have proved that. Campo Santo’s single-player adventure game is one of the all-time great compact games, with roughly five hours of brilliance on offer. However, the studio’s next game, In the Valley of Gods, may never come to light due to Valve’s acquisition of it. Well, here are six stunning seconds of what you could’ve won.
First revealed seven years ago at the 2017 Game Awards, In the Valley of Gods, like Firewatch before it, was billed to be a narrative-driven adventure game – although this time your guiding companion would be exploring alongside you, rather than communicating via walkie talkie. Set in Egypt in the 1920s, this single-player game puts you in the shoes of a former explorer heading out on one last expedition, keen to feel the thrill of adventure once again.
Announced while Campo Santo was still independent, it initially wanted to get the game in players’ hands in 2019. However, after being bought by Valve in 2018, In the Valley of Gods was put on hold indefinitely. It’s not been officially axed, and still even has a Steam page with a placeholder release window of 2029. But seeing as so many Campo Santo devs went on to work on various Valve projects like Half-Life Alyx, it’s unlikely that the band will get back together to pick the project back up.
Its visuals already looked impressive (even by today’s standards) when that 2017 reveal trailer dropped, and this clip posted by Valve visual effects developer Matthew Wilde only builds the case that this would’ve been a truly beautiful game with some clever graphical tech powering it.
Spotted by ‘Gabe Follower,’ Wilde posted a short snippet of a gameplay test for In the Valley of Gods on his Bluesky page. While it is just six seconds of the main character wading through a cave behind companion Zora, it demonstrates just how much effort was going into making a visual spectacle. The stunning water physics feature ripples reacting off of one another, shadows, and distortion of the submerged figure of Zora. Wilde is something of a liquid graphics specialist, as he has also posted clips of work he did on Half-Life Alyx and Counter-Strike 2. Yes, this clip is from a test so isn’t entirely representative of what the final water effects of the game could’ve been, but they are pretty impressive.
Matthew Wilde, the Valve developer behind the water shader for Counter-Strike 2, has shared a rare gameplay footage. It shows the water technology that was tested for In The Valley of Gods before Valve acquired the company Campo Santo. Team shelved the game not so long after… pic.twitter.com/wIs6Im8KYx
— Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) November 11, 2024
While we may never get to experience In the Valley of Gods, here are some amazing story games that you absolutely can. Oh, and please do me a favor and go and play Firewatch, it’s brilliant and one of the best Game Pass games too, so millions of you have zero excuse not to try it.
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