Welcome to this week’s installment of F2P Friday, where we highlight our favorite Free-to-Play games. The video game market is oversaturated, and sometimes, hidden gems fall through the cracks. This is where we dig for you and feature a new F2P game we know you will enjoy every week. This week, we got stuck in a time loop while playing Awkward Valley, a strategy simulation game about planning the perfect day.
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Awkward Valley
Welcome to Awkward Valley! Plan Lars’ day, tackle strange activities and unlock bizarre new options to fill your looping day. Gym? Therapy? Vending machine snacks? It’s up to you! Featuring Awkward Yeti’s weird and wonderful characters in a totally normal town.
The Basics
Let’s get down to the basics. Awkward Valley is a totally normal, definitely-not-a-time-loop daily planner sim published by Rue Valley Time Management Department. You’ll restart the morning, drag activities from your trusty notebook into your schedule and hit “Start” to watch your perfectly (or terribly) planned day unfold. Will you be productive, exhausted, or just spiral into existential dread?
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Featuring a micro deck-building mechanic, every choice shapes your routine. Convert fatigue into gains at the gym, fuel your soul (or just your stomach) with vending machine snacks, or attend therapy to process your life choices. As you progress, unlock new activities, modifiers and Rue Valley-inspired oddities—because nothing here is ever truly normal.
Why Should I Play?
So why should you play Awkward Valley? This is a unique and unpredictable take on the time-management strategy game genre. There is a tutorial option, but I found trial and error to be a fair method of game progression. You start with just a few options on your to-do list that will leave Lars feeling unbalanced and needing to unlock other ways to pass the time.
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The days are broken into one-hour time blocks that can hold one activity that affects Lars’ day by adding positively or negatively to the overall day score. New goals for unlocking additional activities appear when certain criteria are met. The deck randomization can hinder progress, but there is no rush to finish tasks with the nature of the repeating days.
Watch the official trailer below and prepare to plan the perfect day for Lars. You can play Awkward Valley on Steam for free here.
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