Aporia: Beyond The Valley is a first-person adventure game that takes the 'walking simulator' subgenre, makes the puzzle-solving aspect more prominent, adds a bit of 'survival horror', and requires either some exploring or a whole lot of exploring, depending on whether or not you're a completionist.

The game has some technical flaws you should read a bit more about before buying (see below). However, if you can deal with those issues, they're easily forgiven, because Aporia: Beyond The Valley offers a beautiful, mysterious world with challenging puzzles that are sometimes so large-scale they are genuinely awe-inspiring. All this makes for a satisfying experience I recommend to everyone who's into the type of game I just described.

Note that there's a free demo version of Aporia: Beyond The Valley on Steam. You can start there if you're not entirely sure whether this is a game for you, although I suppose the demo version only contains the first area, which is largely a tutorial zone and doesn't require much lateral thinking like the other zones do. It may, however, be a welcome tool to check if your computer can run the game smoothly enough.



The story of Aporia: Beyond The Valley is told through projections the player charater comes across. There isn't one word of dialogue or text in the game, leaving the story highly susceptible to interpretation. On the Steam forums, you'll find a thread where people have posted many walls of text describing their personal interpretation of the story, which I don't recommend you read before playing, of course. You're better off making of the story what you make of it, after which you can still read other people's interpretations.

Suffice to say, without any dialogue or text, the story isn't the main focus of the game.



Aporia: Beyond The Valley's basic gameplay is classic first-person puzzle adventure / walking simulator: you move through the game's wondrous, mysterious 3D world and interact with certain objects. You can use the keyboard & mouse or a controller.

Depending on whether or not you'll play the game in a way to unlock all of the Steam Achievements, Aporia: Beyond The Valley will be an entirely different experience.

If you don't care about Steam Achievements or about seeing every single thing a game has to offer, you can pretty much speedrun through the game. You'll need to solve a couple of puzzles and do some mild exploration to find items required to continue, but you'll be able to finish Aporia: Beyond The Valley in under five hours.

On the other hand, if you're a completionist, you'll easily see the counter go upwards of 15 hours of gameplay. You'll have to spend a vast amount of time exploring the game world to unlock some of the achievements that require collecting all of the consumables. Also, you'll have to solve a couple more optional puzzles, one of which will have you exploring every nook and cranny of the largest of the five areas.

You get a map of the world at some point, but it doesn't mark the spot where you are, so you'll have to use landmarks and roads to identify where you are and where you want to go.

In the third area of the game, there's a forest that's haunted by a scary wraith you need to avoid. You''ll encounter this creature for the larger part of the fourth area, as well. In these parts of the game, a sort of 'survival horror mode' kicks in: you need to avoid being caught by the wraith or it's game over.

There are plenty of places to run to where the wraith can't follow, making him disappear and then reappear somewhere around the area. Sometimes, you'll encounter him within one minute after making him disappear, whereas sometimes, you can roam the area for fifteen minutes before encountering him again. It goes without saying that completionists will spend a lot more time in these two areas than a speedrunner would.



The one big downside to Aporia: Beyond The Valley are its technical flaws. For one, this game requires a lot of your computer. The GPU's fans will sound like you're playing the most recent triple-A title with all the settings on 'ultra'. I'm hesitant to use technical terms here as I'm no expert, but the game seems very poorly optimized. You do not need the best computer ever, but if you know your rig is getting somewhat outdated (especially the GPU), chances are it won't be able to handle what this game will throw at it.

Anyhow, the game also has a serious problem of texture popping. After loading a game, you see textures popping in, one after another, for up to ten seconds. While walking around the world, you'll also see textures popping in from time to time. After reloading a saved game a couple of times, the texture popping can cause the game to become bugged because vital parts of the game world don't get rendered at all, prohibiting you from continuing. If that happens, you need to exit the game and restart it.

Because of how much the game seems to struggle to get going and to keep going, it crashes on occasion. Again, depending on how powerful your rig is, these crashes may occur more or less frequent.

A completely different type of technical issue with the game is its complete lack of an option to rebind keys. The default keybindings are the most commonly used (WASD for movement etc.), but left-handed people or people who only want to play games using a personalized control scheme, are not catered to.

The devs posted on the Steam forums they don't intend to implement an option to rebind keys through the game's menu (post #22 in https://steamcommunity.com/app/573130/discussions/0/2132869574254447695/?ctp=2).

They did, however, post a config file you can download and alter in order to use different keybindings. This works, but be aware it isn't simply a matter of going into the existing files in the Steam folder and changing some values in a user-friendly text file, as is usually the case. So if you're a computer illiterate, it's not advisable to count on being able to change the controls. Again, you may want to try to get the free demo version of the game working for you before deciding to purchase.



As I wrote in the previous section, there are some technical issues with the game, especially in the graphics department. But besides that, Aporia: Beyond The Valley's world looks wonderful and beautiful - sometimes downright stunning.

The only thing I regret is that there's always a permanent fog in the distance. This was probably implemented to reduce the vast amount of resources the game requires, but the result is the game looks a bit less beautiful because of it. By night, you see a translucent fog that causes a fading effect on every object in the distance. During a large part of the day, it looks like there's some sort of orange smog, as if both the morning fog and the orange glow from the early sunrise hardly ever go away.

Aporia: Beyond The Valley's musical score sounds wonderful. It's very atmospheric and it very much fits the beautiful and mysterious game world.

Sound effects are very crisp. One small gripe here is that you sometimes hear the sound of your footsteps continuing even when you're standing still. Not only does it clearly sound exactly like your avatar's footsteps, but you're literally the only living creature in the world, so it's not an intended feature to create a spooky atmosphere or the likes. It's a minor bug.



Aporia: Beyond The Valley has 7 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 4 while running the game.

As I mentioned a couple of times, the Steam Achievements are very challenging as in they require you to do everything the game has to offer, and to find every single consumable or interactable item in the game world (about 400 of them overall), so this is a very time-consuming process.

Aporia beyond the valley is a journey into a dimension of an ancient civilization, surrounded by ancient puzzles and dangers that corrupt the sacred lands you must liberate. A peculiar and majestic glimpse into the atmosphere of its past, which has been cultivated by the memory of this valley of many visions to remember.

Aporia: Beyond The Valley is a good nonlinear walking simulator that blends horror, exploration and puzzle solving together. The game is visually stunning with beautiful scenery which is great since you will be doing lots of walking to find items and puzzle locations. Good variety of puzzles that were never that hard but do require some thinking. Plenty of collectibles in the form of edible plants for health and liquid vials containing energy to open new locations or to initiate a puzzles. Some chapters do contain chase sequences to run away from an entity. The game also has a dynamic day\night cycle and an interesting story told without text/dialogue. I did have performance issues throughout the game where it would freeze or would not exit completely upon quitting the game. Make sure to save in at least two save spots in case your initial save file goes missing (This happen to me). Despite these issues the game was still enjoyable. Thank you "Drasco" for gifting me this game [7.5/10]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2277223540

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Wow, that was an amazing experience. Very much enjoyed. Not a single word in the entire thing, yet it told a story very well. The gameplay was fun and interesting, the art style fantastic, the music and sounds were perfect. This was an excellent game. (And makes for way too many pretty screenshots!) 9/10.

The world of Aporia: Beyond the Valley is mysterious, enchanting and alluring. You travel through an ancient world devoid of life, learning why all the people have gone. This is a first person mystery adventure with a beautifully detailed open world. The music adds to your immersion as you discover who you are .
Words cannot describe this game because there aren't enough superlatives for it. I didn't get half of the achievements but saw most of the game. 100% achievement hunters are in for a treat with so many collectables and puzzles to solve along the way. Be sure to explore every corner!
You have a choice what ending to have, but you can go back in and play the last chapter again to experience the alternative ending. There is a horror element in Chapter 4 which I didn't like and I scooted through that chapter as quick as I could!
Highly recommend. If you want to leave the problems of this world behind, this is the perfect game to play. It is one of those rare games that I didn't want to finish. 9/10

Meh.
Nice graphics, but horrendous optimisation.
Great music, but not enough of it.
Puzzles, believe it or not, are mostly optional, unless you want 100% completion, if not, there are like 2-3 that are mandatory to complete the game and the mirror puzzle is sadly not as great, fun or epic as in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. And puzzles, little there is, are easy, because most of the time is as simple as fetching or something played out, like getting 4L of water, while you only have buckets of 3, 5 and 8. So pretty much nothing new.
Most of the game is walking simulator, which wouldn't be so bad, but later it throws swiming with boat at you, and it's horrible. It's slow, nothing happens (other than crouching sometimes, so branch won't hit you, but it doesn't matter, I didn't die or fall off because of not doing that). Also, later in the game, it turns into Benny Hill simulator like Amnesia or Outlast, where monsters appear and you have to run away from them. It's boring and pretty crappy.
I won't complain about lenght much, because it's just right in my opinion and doesn't have time to get incredibly aggravating.
Story is decent, but it's a shame that game itself is not engaging. I guess if you like walking simulators, then this game is a must and you can ignore this review, but don't expect puzzles to be another Riven or Myst level of challenge.

There's not enough puzzles in this puzzle game. To be honest there's almost none to be found here. Every minute of the first 2 hours of gameplay I wondered where will this introduction end, only to realize this is everything there is. The graphics is really nice, but graphics alone will not win this fight. Even the story made little sense in the very end, but it grabbed my attention during play. I loved the level design because it encouraged exploration and every little corner looked like it held a secret, but then I got c**kblocked several times by an invisible wall so I gave up looking around. Seriously, the amount of invisible walls is just disgusting.

All in all, it's just a nice looking, linear exploration / walking simulator, with a bit of a backstory.

See written review below or watch it here: https://youtu.be/ylafRyb4Whc

I purchased this game from Green Man Gaming.

You wake up in this gorgeous world without any clear objectives. As you explore, and progress through the world, you learn about the story along the way. The story is told visually with animated projections. I love the way the story is told. With the game having absolutely no dialog or text, I admit that did feel a little uncertain about some of the details along the way, but overall I liked the story.

The gameplay is largely that of a walking simulator with a focus on exploring the world and solving various puzzles to progress. The world can be explored freely, and to get the most out of Aporia, I definitely suggest exploring thoroughly. If you don’t, you might miss out on some of the story elements. I liked the exploration, but I regret not saving the game prior to hitting the point of no return because now I can’t go back to explore the island further.

You have a tube of glowing liquid that’s required for unlocking doors, and growing vines to climb. This fluid is consumed when you use it, so you’ll need to keep refilling by finding more supply around the world.

As far as the puzzles go, some of the puzzles might make you stop and think for a bit, but overall they aren’t very difficult. There really aren’t that many puzzles either, so I was hoping for there to be more, but Aporia seems to focus more on creating an immersive world to enjoy rather than throwing an abundance of puzzles at you.

• good story with lovely visual story telling with animated projections
  
• the environments are diverse and immersive with absolutely gorgeous and stunning visuals
  
• fantastic ambience and superb soundtrack that sets a very calming and relaxing mood where you can just sit back and enjoy the world
  
• performance is excellent
  
• full controller support

• with the game having absolutely no dialog or text, some details of the story might not be
  
• (nitpick) some people will want more (and/or more difficult) puzzles
  
• (nitpick) keyboard controls are not customizable (WASD, F, Ctrl, Space, Mouse)

The game took me about 4 hours, and as long as you explore thoroughly, there isn’t much in the way of replay value unless you want to just bask in the game’s beauty.

Aporia: Beyond the Valley is a good game, and I expect those enjoy walking around, exploring, and soaking in a beautiful immersive world would like Aporia. With that being said, I personally would have liked a lot more puzzles, so I’m glad I got Aporia at a sale price.

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You can also view this review on my website here.[www.azralynn.com]

Not bad but not great. Good if you get it on sale. Probably not worth it otherwise.

If you like wander-around-solve-puzzles games, the puzzles in this are too few and too easy--a few old standards you've seen a thousand times (a mirror/beam puzzle, a "turn on all the lights" puzzle, etc).

If you like a good story, you'll find this one is cryptic and unsatisfying, assuming you can even figure out what the heck is going on. (I like it when a game doesn't spell everything out, but I have my limits, and I suspect here the story is deliberately opaque to conceal how little of it there is.)

If you like walking simulators, though, boy howdy is this the game for you. Apart from a few areas where you have to run like hell so the game's one nemesis doesn't get you, and the occasional puzzle or climb/jump exploration area, you walk. A LOT. Especially in the game's enormous chapter 3 (which is most of the game). When you look at a save file and you find out what chapter 3 is actually CALLED, you'll think a cruel joke has been played on you.

It's a pretty game, with good visuals and sounds, and it plays fair; pretty much everything important is very clearly lit or marked so you don't have to do an endless scavenger hunt in acres of scenery.

Recommended, barely, but not at full price.

Beautiful game. Not really for me though, got bored real quick. Will recommend however as it's not a "bad game".