Spotlight: Aquaria

First a little background on me. About a year ago, I asked my friend during extreme boredom "what's the best game I've never played?" One of his answers was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I somehow hadn't played this game despite owning a PlayStation practically since it came out. When I got to it, it was wonderful. It opened my eyes to a whole new genre--one that Metroid players had known about for decades.

The free form exploration was really cool, accomplished the whole "suck me into the game world" aspect I said I loved. Then you get RPG-like character advancement, becoming stronger as the game goes one (has anyone ever made the reverse, where you get weaker as the game goes on?). Plus, you have different weapons and tools which let you try different things to get through sections of the game. I went on to play Super Metroid afterward, which I also loved, and my fascination with this genre was well underway.

Now fast forward a bit, I had purchased the Humble Indy Bundle mainly for World of Goo, and I thought it was a cool scheme for selling software. I didn't really look at the other games, until a few days ago when I got an email telling me they had added the games to Steam, and I could just enter a key to redeem them. Well I decided to have a look at what else I bought. Well one game happened to be Aquaria, which promised to be "Metroidvania meets Ecco the Dolphin." They had me at the first word, as long as it could live up to the billing.

Naija

Time for a brief overview of Aquaria. You play as a kid of humanoid fish thing named Naija, pictured above. Naija is just swimming along when you encounter another creature which looks vaguely like her. This awakens her mind and she realizes she has no memories. So it's time for a quest to discover her origins and/or ties to the planet. Naija has 3 main abilities, she can swim, cook (which would be called potion making if this were a traditional fantasy game), and sing. Singing is the magic system of the game. It uses a radial menu to combine mouse gestures with an Ocarina of Time esque song system. It's pretty slick and works very well.

The game has met my lofty expectations so far, with the caveat that I'm only 3 hours in. The exploration of this game is great, and it's not just finding more areas. You can interact with so much of the background, from all the fish swimming around with you, to rocks, to plants, and more. The gameplay has been primarily exploring new areas, finding new recipes, songs, and occasionally a puzzle to solve. All of which comes together really well.

I do have a few minor complaints. First is the art direction. I find the main character stupid looking. She's too cartoony and it makes gives the impression of being childish. Most of the background art and other creatures don't follow this lead, so I just enjoy the scenery and try not to spend too long looking at Naija. My second complaint is the story telling. It reeks of amateurism. With a poorly done voice over and too exposition. The developers should have took a page from Super Metroid and realized less can be more. Samus didn't have to tell us every time we found some clue "looks like I'm on the right path to Ripley," but Naija feels the need to inform us when we've found something she thinks might belong to her people. I also don't need her to tell me how she feels about everything either. Again, these are just minor issues on a great game.