Aquaria is a game with a lot of firsts behind it. It’s the first title from indie developer Bit-Blot, it’s the first full-length game I’ve played that controls (or, at least, controls well) entirely with the mouse, it’s the first independent game I’ve played with full fledged quality voice acting in it, and it’s the first independent game I’ve paid for, which is actually saying something.

For all the firsts that are evident in the game, the contemporary qualities of Aquaria aren’t what make it stand out. Where this game shines, and I mean really glows, is in the way that it harks back to the timeless classics to provide an experience that is not unlike playing A Link to the Past or Super Metroid.

I don’t throw out comparisons to those timeless classics lightly. Though the obvious limitations of the team behind Aquaria keep it from being quite the level of Nintendo’s golden titles, for two guys and a handful of contributors this game comes amazingly close. The game as a whole stands as a testament to the beauty of the simplicity of 2D games.

When looking at any media of the game, the first thing that becomes apparent is how great looking it is. At any given moment you could stop playing and take a screen shot beautiful enough to warrant a place on your desktop. All the strange underwater creatures and lush sea fantasy locales are rendered in a way that bursts with character and style. Seemingly aware of how beautiful a game they’ve made, you will find many instances where the designers simply place unique enemies or creatures that appears in only one particular spot in the game and serve seemingly no purpose other than to be admired. The constant use of this excessiveness adds to the feeling that the waters of Aquaria are deep and strange and there is always something new and beautiful for the player to discover. The pervasiveness of the environments and the way that the underwater world seemed to function in a perfectly natural way really reminded me of the same sense of discovery I’d feel when playing the Metroid games.

At the start of the game the main character is just chilling on a rock. No, really, you’re just sitting there enjoying yourself and after a few minutes of awkward silence you realize you’re supposed to be controlling the protagonist, Naija. Soon, as you’re swimming around carelessly, you begin to hear Naija’s voice narrate the beginning of her story while you’re playing. There’s not much to understand at the beginning, mostly that the character’s first instance of self awareness is when you start to control her. She then becomes curious as to whether or not there are other intelligent creatures like her and thus begins your quest. The way that the story is told through quality voice acting almost seamlessly as you play really is a novel method of storytelling that doesn’t constantly halt the experience.

Throughout much of the game you’ll only be doing two of three things at a time: swimming, singing, or attacking. Swimming and attacking are pretty straightforward, but the singing feature of the game is actually pretty neat. Rather then pulling up menus all the time, the player can interact with the world and change forms by singing different songs. It’s pretty neat and definitely has an Ocarina of Time feel to it. The controls have been made so simple that you can play entirely with the mouse if you wanted. Left click is swim, and depending on your form, right click is either sing or attack. While seemingly simple, the elegance of the gameplay reveals itself in how much timing and environment affect what you’re doing. If you swim into a wall you’ll stick to it and if you try to swim while on a wall then Naija will push off of it for a speed boost. For much of the game you’ll find that this is the quickest way to get around if you can master it. Most of the elements of gameplay have little tricks like this that offer bonuses to more skilled users.

While you will seldom use it, there is a menu system in Aquaria in which you can do a few unique things. The one of real importance is the cooking system. In your explorations you’ll come across various food items which take on the functions of standard items in any other game. However, once you collect something its “recipe” will be stored in the menu. Anything you’ve collected you can look up the recipe for and if you have the right ingredients you can “cook” it. It’s a charming system that adds a little bit of depth to traditional item usage.

As good as Aquaria is, it’s definitely not without a few faults. The game took a little while to pick up the pace and become really exciting. Being beautiful is one thing, but as we all know, looks aren’t everything and gameplay really is the heart of the matter. Luckily, once the game finally gets its story going and you make it through the first two temples it doesn’t fall back into a lull. Another issue for me was the constant adjustment of control schemes. Though Aquaria was tailored to be a mouse-only experience, there were many times where the mouse and keyboard style just worked better. Every ten minutes I would switch control schemes only to find myself in a situation that provoked me to switch back. While this was a minor annoyance, I have to give the developers credit for making the setup so seamless. Sometimes I would switch between mouse and keyboard, mouse-only, and keyboard-only control styles and not even realize I’d done so. Also, a lot of the voice acting for the secondary characters was questionable. However, since there was so little VA aside from Naija it’s really a minor complaint.

Simply put, Aquaria is one of the most inspired games I’ve played in a long time. It’s just short of the bar set by the genre-defining classics of previous years, but their influence is visible and appreciated.

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