7.0
This game isn't worth a deal with a devil, but it could be worth it for you if there's a good deal. Just don't put up your soul as collateral.
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
Dim Bulb Games · Dec 2, 2019
About
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a Narrative-Adventure game about traveling, sharing stories, and surviving manifest destiny. Featuring gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine combines 2D visuals with a 3D overworld US map. Players wander across a folkloric Depression era United States at their own pace, meeting strangers with their own stories to tell. Through these interactions, players will be able to collect unique stories which can then be re-told to unlock new interactions. In this way the in-game stories themselves act as a currency to progress through the game, and it’s up to the player to pair the right story with the unique needs of each of the characters that you will encounter throughout your travels. Only through these right pairings will characters reveal their true selves, and bestow you with the most powerful stories, the true ones which reveal something about their own lives. In Where The Water Tastes Like Wine, stories organically take on a life of their own as they grow larger and transform as they're told- and re-told.
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Critic reviews
- 6.5As an interesting intellectual exploration of the role that word-of-mouth plays in storytelling, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine plays like a proof of concept that never graduated beyond an initial prototyping stage. Sure, it has plenty of narratives to uncover, but ultimately the repetitive, shallow mechanics prevent the experience from meeting its full potential. Despite the best efforts of the excellent visual presentation and voice acting, the net product is a hollow shell of what it couldâve been.
- 8.0Hunting down stories is easily the best part of the experience because they’re well written and you never know what to expect. The only thing I liked about the drifter encounters was that they will share your stories with other people and I liked how they would take on a life of their own. Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is a fascinating idea for a game that is probably best experienced in small, shorter doses.
- 6.5Ultimately, I think your mileage will highly depend on how the stories land with you, and whether the act of walking is a delight or a burden. I do think Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is worth a gander, just don’t expect a swan song of a tale or gut punch metaphor about early America. Enjoy it for it what it immediately offers: a fun series of tiny vignettes and discoverable characters to unwind with. Forget the rest.
- Overall, if you enjoy a very slow burn game that really seems better suited to being played for an hour or so a day, or just really want something with a huge focus on narrative, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine may scratch that itch. Those looking for a game with more varied gameplay probably won’t find much to like here, however, as just walking around an admittedly bland map will likely come to bore you sooner rather than later. The game has value and I certainly enjoyed my time with it, but its Switch debut likely won’t turn any more heads than its original release did.
- 6.5Where The Water Tastes Like Wine fills your screen with all manner of illustrative visuals, scenes which look like they were ripped straight out of classic novels. They’re thick with ink, dripping with bright painted colours and oozing atmosphere that helps sell a story, even if said campfire recollection outstays its welcome for far too long and puts you back into a repetitive grind of travel and storytelling.
Gamer reviews
This game might not be for everyone but it was fun while it lasted! You make your own story in this game! Don't buy at full price if you're unsure!
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