Aquadine is a third-person visual novel game (by SoftColors and Ratalaika Games) set in the fictional, seaside town of Aquadine. Mixed with plentiful doses of mythology, merfolk, and mystery, this one is sure to delight fans of the genre when it releases on consoles later this week.
The art style of the game initially caught my eye with its anime-inspired characters and vibrant, painting-like backgrounds, but it was the music that drew me in further and the story that kept me along for the ride. In the opening stages, the player is thrown into a classroom setting with quick introductions to a handful of key characters who are fleshed out over the course of the game. Along with getting to know the characters and their unique quirks, players spend a considerable portion of the early game learning about the town, the stories behind it, and beginning to discover the mysteries that they’ll spend the rest of the game uncovering.
While primitively the characters come across as typical high school students, the depth to each of them is quite impressive and becomes more apparent as the player arrives at a character selection screen a couple hours in. From here the player has the choice of selecting between four different character paths to dive further into the story: Anya, Diana, Cameron, and Elisabeth. If all four are cleared, an epilogue titled “Memories” will be unlocked as the “true ending” of the story.
The game is not without its criticisms though. While I appreciated the attempt, the very limited voice acting often felt out of place and unnecessary. Laughs and gasps were fine, but the few and far between spoken voice lines generally did not match up with the written text. Outside of that pet peeve, my only other real significant criticism was the lack of player choice options to help direct the story outside of the brief character path selection screen. While I, personally, would have liked to make choices, this was a conscious design choice by the development team and I respect that creative decision.
Last, but not least Aquadine also presents the player with a handful of text-based accessibility options to attempt to help players find their maximum comfort as they progress through the well-crafted story. These options include the ability to set text speed, text box opacity, auto-scroll, check missed conversation points via a log, and more.
From the awe-inspiring history of the town to the unique characters that you meet along the way, Aquadine is a great story tied together with beautiful visuals and an inspiring soundtrack. It is currently available on PC and will be available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch this Friday, August 26th.
Review Score: 7/10
[A copy of Aquadine was provided for this review]
