The Valley is alive.

Ten years ago, someone opened a door that was never meant to open. The stories and theories range across the Valley and beyond: A weapons program, a black project out of the old government, nobody knows for sure. Some call it "Citizen", if you believe the old-timers who claim to know. What everyone agrees on is the result. The membrane between what's thought, what's felt, and what's real tore along the Columbia River Gorge that day, and it has been leaking ever since.

The state that occupies the land around it keeps a perimeter and pretends that's the same as control. Inside, you hear fault fields before you can see them, weather rewrites physical reality on a whim, and the shards the Valley leaks are the most valuable things left in a nation broken beyond repair.

Drifters go in for the money, to pay off debt, to escape, and sometimes for reasons they don't say out loud. You're one of them, and your allegiances are your choice.

The people who opened the door are still there, that part isn't a rumor. Will you uncover the origins of this god-forsaken place, or will you let greed control your path? That's up to you and your crew.

The Valley doesn't operate in a way you'd recognize... but it seems to run on three rules. Learn them.

Belief & feelings have weight

What you're sure of is a little more likely to be true in here than it has any right to be. A stressful day can devolve into chaos as the world around you feeds off of your psyche. Faults respond to your state of mind, and so do the creatures the Tear created. Veterans of the Valley are quiet, calm, and boring on purpose. They've trained themselves not to feed it.

Memories become reality

Strong memories stick to the places they were made. On bad nights a building that was torn down years ago comes back, solid enough to walk through, carrying everything that ever happened inside it. Usually it's harmless. Sometimes it remembers you back.

Minds bleed

The wall between one head and the next is thin in the Valley. You'll dream things that were never yours. So will whatever's out there in the trees, and it will use them. Fortify your thoughts... or dull them enough to drown it out.

Faults

Pockets where the Tear is at its worst. Often they wear the shape of a building the Valley dragged back. Sometimes they cover areas with a checkered past in dangerous patterns with strange properties. The drifters who come home are the ones who learned to read the Faults, and when traversal isn't worth it.

Squalls

Every so often the sky goes wrong, all at once, everywhere. Get caught in the open and you come out changed, dead, or something in between. After a Squall, Shards surface in new places and the Faults rearrange themselves. Plan accordingly.

Shards

Crystallized leakages from the Tear itself with properties that are still yet to be understood. A Shard might make you braver, kill your pain, or lead you to your next big score. All of it costs something, and the cost is rarely money. One shard is a life-changing payday, and Shards are the true currency of the Valley. Shards both give, and take.

Most games get made behind closed doors and sold once. We thought we'd try something different.

SIMN, our simulation and networking engine, is on GitHub right now, open source under the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. Nothing's hidden.

Contributions that end up in the repos earn a share of net Steam revenue. The bigger the work, the bigger the slice.

The world, the lore, the art, and the assets remain trapframe IP, closed source. The game ships as a paid Steam release, which funds development and what pays contributors.

You'll be able to clone our work in progress as we build, and even when the game's finished... but if you like what we made, buying it on Steam is a great way to support the artists and developers who made it a reality.

We're trying to build a game studio that doesn't have to compromise on production values, and rewards passionate contributors like they actually deserve to be... not enrich founders and private equity.

Engineers, artists, writers, sound designers; we'd love to work with you. See what we need and reach out.