Aquaria Catch-All:

I did a quick search on the site and didn't find any mention of this indie game that's just about to be released, so I thought I'd mention it and start a thread.

I've been following this since reading about it in an article on Slashdot last year regarding the 2007 IGF finalists. It was the grand prize winner I believe.

Take a squiz at the videos linked below (came from the developers site, bit-blot.com:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqY9m... (Feb 2007 trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVDIz... (Sep 2007 demo)

I know I'm going to be trying this one out first thing on Friday.

It's for PC (now) and the developers cite January for the Mac port release.

[edit] Link

Oh yeah, I remember that trailer! That looks great, definitely will download the demo.

Really neat voice.

I did a quick search on the site and didn't find any mention of this indie game

Christ, how could I not mention this yet. I've been keeping an eye on this for ages now. The game will go online this evening (PST), which means that I won't get to try it out before tomorrow anyway. FYI, they just released a new trailer - just ignore the YouTube stuff and grab the high-res version.

Wow, those are really high production values. Kind of looks like a better-looking, water-based Castlevania with an actual plot.

KillerTomato wrote:

Wow, those are really high production values. Kind of looks like a better-looking, water-based Castlevania with an actual plot.

I thought it looked more like Ecco the Dolphin for the Genesis.

I saw this last week as well, it looks excellent and the demo should be out later today.

Game/Developer Homepage

The high quality teaser video is downloading very, very slowly, so I'm mirroring it here. It's still pretty slow, because it's just a cheap Dreamhost account, but it's at least twice as fast as what I was getting from the main site.

About 50 megs.

Demo's up and available now. Downloading as I'm typing this.

Played it for about 30 minutes now - it feels like a really polished title. Love the control scheme. The gameplay seems like Ecco meets Metroid. Dreamy graphics and soundtrack - hope someone finds a way to extract the music.

Game Release 101 - if you've got something important to share or a game to be launched, make sure that your website survives the release. Bit Blot's website is down right now, so you'll have to search for mirrors if you want the demo.

No dice on finding a mirror so far. Aquaria is a hard thing to search for.... damn fish.

I sprung for the full release last night. There was a patch already released for it to fix startup issues, which unfortunately affected me. I thought it rather ironic that after having just paid for it, I was greeted with a segfault dialog.

Anyway, the game itself works a treat now and I put in about an hour before collapsing last night, and I had the soundtrack echoing in my ears and little fish swimming behind my eyelids as I lay down. Usually a good sign! I'm really digging it so far.

Gameplay? Much like Spunior said, I think. First impressions: I was going to say Castlevania meets Loom.

I've never played Ecco - maybe I should go try the XBL demo and see why people keep drawing comparisons?

kilanash wrote:

I was going to say Castlevania meets Loom.

*swoon*

Wow, they are completely HOSED. Their website now says:

TextDrive
Coming Soon!

This is the placeholder page installed by default on every new TextDrive web site, and will be replaced by the owner of the site eventually.

Looking for a quality web host for your website, rails application or weblog?
Look no further than TextDrive.

There are a few mirrors for the demo on Indygamer

Pretty neat. Reminds me of Metroid, except traversing the world is more mellow than engaging, which could be good or bad depending upon your temperament. The singing wheel is fun to play around with on its own, but not a very good way of interacting with the world.

Thanks for the link, Scaphism. I've only played for an hour or so, but it's a really neat game so far. The production values, especially in terms of sound design, are absolutely stellar. Judging by the number of blank recipe pages, etc., there's apparently a lot of gameplay to be had.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that color-blindness is eventually going to make it much tougher than it would be otherwise.

They seem to be back up.

I bought it. It's a lovely game. Of course, I promptly got stuck by getting past a rock I wasn't supposed to be able to yet -- somehow I managed to jump past it. Couldn't go back, and ended up quitting for a bit.

It also has problems running at anything past 1024x768.... the two higher resolutions are buggy and don't work right for me. Hopefully the devs will use some of their new cash hoard to buy some big monitors.

After a few more hours screwing around with this game: it's incredible. It's a lot like the early Metroids, but with much better graphics and sound, and what appears to be an actual plotline with an excellently-voiced main character.

It's enormous, and you'll spend a great deal of time just wandering around looking at stuff. There's a wonderful sense of exploration, and lots of fun hidden goodies. It's extremely 'open', in that you can go in any direction and do anything you want; the world isn't as tightly constrained as Metroid was, and it's much, much larger. So I'm a bit lost right now, trying to figure out what's to find in the Kelp Forest.

When I say big, I'm NOT KIDDING... each zone is, hmm, it must be at least 20x20 screens, though not jammed full of stuff, and you just keep finding more and more and more zones. It's so large that it's a bit frustrating, but it's so pretty that you won't mind *too* much.

The graphics are lovely, the music is wonderful, and I strongly suggest you take a look at the demo. So far, I think it's the best indie game since Star Rangers 2.

In a year of standout games, it looks like this one holds up.

Further comments ensue.

I spent about 5 hours playing this morning and my experience pretty much echoes Malors. Wow, how much game is there, I wonder? I, too, got lost in the Kelp Forest, and just kept wandering, discovering more zones, more areas, and started to feel a little overwhelmed. Especially due to the lack of save points in that particular set of zones, which made me keep replaying a certain section about 4 times due to my own suckitude.

But I am tending to think I wandered into the wrong zone too early and that I need to backtrack and find an easier zone.

Otherwise, I continue to dig it and I still have the main 'theme' of the songs in my head - all the soundtracks have a continuing musical melody / theme that repeats in each but is reworked in new ways in all the different areas. A really nice thing I have noticed also, is that the key in which all the backing soundtracks is composed in, is the same key used in the main character's singing interface. Rarely, if at all, do the songs you sing sound discordant with the music running in the background, which just speaks volumes for the amount of care and thought put into it.
Swimming around on a seahorse (you use the singing interface to steer it) can be a lot of fun just by steering and making your song match the music.

Ok, rant off, back to playing after giving it a rest for a few hours to soothe my aching wrist.

Giving this thread another poke since I feel it deserves more notice. And to comment some more.

I'm practically done with the game, after putting in just nigh 30 hours playtime. I spent a lot of time poking around trying to collect everything, backtrack through all the levels as much as possible and fill in all the maps. I was stuck on what to do at one point which contributed to some of that time spent - so possibly take 5 hours off and that's about the average time you'd expect to spend on first play-through if you did everything.

It's a really wonderful game and deserves more attention.

Hey, even Certis gave it a nod in last week's podcast! That has to count for something, right?

Yeh, this game is simply phenomenal indie effort. It..well, just is.

I just saw an interview with one of the devs on the 1up Show this week and I hadn't heard boo about this game before. However, after watching the interview, which was interspersed with some gameplay footage, I have to say I'm absolutely sold. I'll be buying this within the next few days, since it's seems to be a fantastic MetroidVania type of game. In other words, right up my alley.

Aquaria is now on Steam. I loved the demo, but I was too poor to buy it, and I'd forgotten about it by the time I had money. Of course, I just did all my Christmas shopping yesterday, and am once again bone-dry.

Ooh, it's 20% off on Steam until the end of the year. This a a game going for $20 that is by all measures worth a full $60. Everybody should buy it.

Wow, that sounded really shilly. This is only my third post. I should watch that.

I was waiting for them to release the widescreen-supporting update. Someone want to save me the three clicks it would take for me to find out for myself and let me know if this incorporates that?

[Edit] You guys were too slow. Although it was more than three clicks, more like 8 clicks and a search in the forum. Widescreen support is still in development. The 1.1 release is in testing still.

Yaz wrote:

Ooh, it's 20% off on Steam until the end of the year. This a a game going for $20 that is by all measures worth a full $60. Everybody should buy it.

Wow, that sounded really shilly. This is only my third post. I should watch that.

PLANT!

LiquidMantis wrote:

I was waiting for them to release the widescreen-supporting update. Someone want to save me the three clicks it would take for me to find out for myself and let me know if this incorporates that?

[Edit] You guys were too slow. Although it was more than three clicks, more like 8 clicks and a search in the forum. Widescreen support is still in development. The 1.1 release is in testing still.

The Mac version, although the full $30, has widescreen support and support for very high resolution monitors.

Yes it is strange that the Mac port is the best version.

LiquidMantis wrote:

I was waiting for them to release the widescreen-supporting update. Someone want to save me the three clicks it would take for me to find out for myself and let me know if this incorporates that?

[Edit] You guys were too slow. Although it was more than three clicks, more like 8 clicks and a search in the forum. Widescreen support is still in development. The 1.1 release is in testing still.

1.1.1 was released December 12th on PC, and has the widescreen support. I didn't buy the steam version though and can't vouch for widescreen being fixed on steam.

Well worth trying it now, if you passed on it a year ago.

kilanash wrote:

1.1.1 was released December 12th on PC, and has the widescreen support. I didn't buy the steam version though and can't vouch for widescreen being fixed on steam.

Well worth trying it now, if you passed on it a year ago.

Thanks! Yeah, I did pass on it then. I enjoyed the demo but didn't want to play it distorted or in a window (if windowed was even an option).

For those of you with a Mac, you can download a trial for the game but not from the trial section of the developer's webpage. Go to the page to buy the game, click the Mac logo, and then you can download a trial version of the game from there.

kilanash wrote:

1.1.1 was released December 12th on PC, and has the widescreen support. I didn't buy the steam version though and can't vouch for widescreen being fixed on steam.

Well worth trying it now, if you passed on it a year ago.

Can anybody confirm that the steam version has widescreen support? I can't find any details on that.