While big name developers constantly push hyped up releases such as
Mass Effect, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and Call of Duty 4, there's
always the little developer that could, bringing out an unnoticed gem,
one that happens to be better and more polished than some big name
releases. In this case, the little developer that could is Bit Blot,
and the gem is Aquaria, a game that can best be described as
Ecco the Dolphin x Castlevania/Metroid. It's one of those games that
prove games can be art, and shows that no matter how big your
development team, you can put out a polished, high quality product...
... and in Aquaria's case, that's a grand total of two people.
Yes, two people made this masterpiece of a game, but unless you did a
quick bit of research, you never would have guessed. Tons of work
clearly went into this game. It was in development for over two years,
one person working on the art, and the other doing the music, coding,
and design of the game, and frankly, it's quite amazing to see what
these two people put out.
Aquaria is about Naija, an underwater
creature who is in search of her family. She travels the massive ocean
world of Aquaria, from dark caves and ancient ruins, to beautiful
underwater paradises. Aquaria has a force that runs through it, the
Verse, a rythmic pulse that be called something like the heartbeat of
the waters. By singing, Naija can manipulate the Verse and change the
waters around her, gain new abilities, and change forms. Along your
adventure, you'll meet a number of characters who help to move the
surprisingly good and engaging story along. There are a few good twists
along the way, and the dialogue is well written.
As stated
earlier, Aquaria can best be described as a cross between Ecco the
Dolphin and Castlevania/Metroid. You'll swim through an absolutely
massive underwater world with many diverse, and beautiful looking
underwater environments. You'll come into contact with many different
creatures, and explore the many different areas of the world of
Aquaria. The same open ended "Metroidvania" style gameplay is present
here. You'll sometimes find yourself at a point you can't pass, only to
find some sort of ability or form later on in the game, and then return
to that one spot, able to continue on and explore new waters, although
compared to Metroid and Castlevania, these moments don't really happen
all too often, and more or less you're able to explore much of the
world from the start, once you're done with the small tutorial.
Moving
around the world of Aquaria is as simple as clicking where you want to
go. Hold down the mouse button, and Naija will swim, while you move a
cursor around the screen and Naija will go there. In fact, the entire
game is controlled by the mouse. You'll use the left button to move
around, the middle button to look around, and the right button to use
each of Naija's powers, or interact with plants and other sea-dwellers.
The mouse only control-scheme works great, and navigation around
Aquaria can be fun all in itself. The game also has the support for
keyboard + mouse, and the Xbox 360 controller. Sometimes, it's just fun
to swim around and do nothing, which is helped by the great level
design and great looking areas.
A small problem, however, is
that sometimes you'll find yourself lost, and not know what to do.
Sometimes, you'll be fighting a boss, but you'll also be fighting
yourself, trying to figure out how in the world you actually hurt the damn thing. Also, again, the world is huge, which means a few more save points could have been nice.
Two
of the main mechanics in the game are singing and cooking. Certain
plants you'll encounter are a certain colour. Singing the right note
near them will cause them to release a nice item for you. Not unlike
the Legend of Zelda series, you'll also learn different songs as you
play through your adventure. These songs either do simple things like
give you a barrier, but the big thing here is that you'll earn
different forms, and by singing, you can transform into these forms.
The forms will give you the ability to attack, swim through strong
current, avoid danger from certain foes, squeeze through small spaces,
and more. You'll have to switch through the various forms to be able to
pass some of the games challenges, such as fighting enemies, or solving
puzzles, and to find new and secret areas in Aquaria. Some of the forms
seem like they could have been a simple spell though, such as Light,
which simply let's you see in the darkness, minus the abilities you
have in your normal form.
Along your adventure, you'll collect
different ingredients, weather it be by interacting with plant's and
animals, or by defeating enemies. You can use these ingredients to cook
different dishes, will will usually raise various things such as
health, speed, or damage, and others that give you new abilities. You
can learn new dishes by collecting them, or randomly cooking
ingredients and hoping you get something out of it. Most dishes can be
cooked anywhere, and require only two ingredients, while others require
you to head to a kitchen, and use more ingredients.
The main
adventure is pretty long. You're looking at about a 12 hour game, which
is if you don't explore the entire world and see what the rest of
Aquaria has to offer. You can gain new abilities to help you on your
quest, get objects to decorate your home, find recipes and ingredients,
get pets to help you in fights, and more. Some things you find be
entering certain areas of Aquaria will also unlock more ending
cutscenes, providing more incentive to explore the vast underwater
world. All of these things can be done by swimming through the massive
world, bigger than anything you've seen in a Metroid or Castlevania
game.
If that isn't enough, the game has a mode that allows you
to create your own levels. You can place plants, creatures, and more
across your levels, save them, and play them. The fact that it's fun
just to swim around the beautiful world of Aquaria makes me see a lot
of people wasting time with this. For those who want to go the extra
step, you can make mods for the games. Title screens, enemies, entire
levels, tilesets, animation, graphics, sound, music, and more. You can
completely customize the game to your liking, and even download mods
and install them to try out ones made by other people. I myself haven't
done anything with modding because I don't know much is anything at all
about it, but those who are willing to invest some time here have a
promising time waster.
All of this is made all the better thanks
to some excellent looking visuals. The underwater world is brought to
life thanks to some well done, well animated 2D. The creatures of
Aquaria are also plentiful and diverse, all the plants, animals,
characters, and enemies you'll encounter are animated well, and look
great. The diversity of the underwater areas are also great. Each area
of Aquaria has a distinct theme to it, and the backgrounds and colours
are all usually nice and colourful. Little visual touches such as
bubbles, current, and the plants flowing steadily in the water make
things all the nicer.
The excellent visuals are backed by a
superb soundtrack. The music is nice and relaxed, and fits the whole
underwater theme of the game excellently. The game contains over 50
tracks, and all are pleasant to listen to, and some are simply
beautiful. In other words, I want a soundtrack. The game's story is
also told through Naija's point of view, by means off well acted voice
overs. Never will you think the voice acting is bad or out of place.
It's
amazing to what Bit Blot has done here. This two man development team
has truly put out something special. This is the kind of game that
could easily be a success on downloadable game service such as Xbox
Live Arcade or WiiWare. The fact that they say sales are going well for
an Indie game, that they think they'll be able to continue developing
games, and that they have some new ideas, only make me more excited for
the next project that could come out of this two man team.
