Valleys Between is the sort of game that’s so beautiful I would probably play it even if it wasn’t any good. I’d play it just to look at it, listen to it, be around its world and its art. Happily, it is good. Part tactical game, part curious bucolic spin on the endless runner, I have never played anything that combines its various parts in such a way. And there’s more.
Really though, it is terribly pretty. This is the natural world idealised, with purple skies, distant mountains delivered in simply, dreamy pastels, and woodland of cyan and pink, light green and sandy yellow, all divided into hexes.
Your job is to bring water from the ground, by striking a hex and pulling upwards. Water will flood and pool and gloop around, and grass with spring from surrounding hexes. Water feeds the grass, and the grass encourages a fox to travel with you, moving from hex to hex as long as there’s something underfoot and taking a turn to make each short journey.
Source: Eurogamer Valleys Between is a puzzle game that obeys tree-time