Around 1988-1989, John Buckley and Martin Holland were working on what can be described as a first-person adventure game with a detailed character selection front end, and a pseudo-3D map section.
The main game itself was apparently very much in the style of Space Harrier and Outrun with its object scaling, but with more detail in the graphics. This may have been for particular parts of the game, but overall it was more of a RPG/Adventure game.
The game was advanced, and featured some authentic animations and sequences. There were male and female characters created from a series of character strips, which gelled together. Only Martin Holland could pull off such a feat, and he did.
The characters were very Elvish and pretty similar in style to Martin’s character profiles in Gauntlet 3. John Buckley had managed to get trees and rocks, and little towers moving around the screen in 3D – roughly, but looking good for back then! Graphically, according to John, this was the best work that Martin ever did on a C64.
Vale Of Shadows wasn’t completed or released because the company couldn’t pay its workers. The company went into liquidation and immediately reformed. Though sadly after this, all the artists had left and Vale of Shadows was shelved.
John does not have anything of the game any longer sadly, and Martin was the only person who did. Sadly, Martin passed away recently and it seems that his work will remain unseen. Originally a video was sent of the work he did to GTW, but the video got lost, and Martin passed away briefly before resending another copy of the work. It is not known if anyone else has the work which was done.
The footage I remember had a castle like image with an animating hawk which flew above. This might have been part of the game’s introduction sequence. There was also some character shots and the loading screen to Chocablock Charlie which was unused. I have been kicking myself ever since for losing the video.
In 2010, Paul Drury produced a Desert Island Disks feature with Neil Thompson who mentioned his involvement in the C64/PC versions of the game…
“Vale of Shadows , for the C64 and PC, was a kind of Elven fantasy, where you created a character and went on quests. I spent months designing the Elves and the system whereby you could change their appearance but it just never went anywhere.”
You can find a photo in the gallery which was printed in Retro Gamer, which shows Martin in the background laughing (And maybe even working on Vale of Shadows in the background?), along with John Buckley sitting alongside Neil (Sat back in the chair with long hair).
Sadly no-one who worked on the game has kept anything from back then. Martin would have been the main source and hope to have found anything.
In December 2021, Paul Marshall uploaded a video with a quick tour of the M.C. Lothlorien offices around 1988 time. It is a fantastic timewarp, but amazingly there is some footage of Martin and a showcase of his work desk, where he is currently working on Vale of Shadows. On the screen you will see a very rare look at his Weapons shop that was produced for the game. Even from the blurry image, it looks amazing!
Here is a clip at the moment the game graphics are shown: https://youtu.be/t5FBxrkvy8Q?t=150
I have extracted the images as best as I can to add to the gallery, but it means we finally have a screenshot of sorts for the game.
Another major title which sadly never quite made it…
Contributions: Martin Holland, John Buckley, Paul Drury, Neil Thompson, Paul Marshall
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