I’ve always been a fan of oral storytelling. There’s a specific atmosphere created when there is a single person telling a story to a group. I actually participated in Speech in High School in the Storytelling category. So when I saw the trailer prior to PAX West 2017 I knew I needed to see this game. Oral storytelling is the central focus of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. A game about collecting and telling tales of all sorts, traveling around a folklore filled Depression Era United States. Encountering unique individuals, and following their tales as you encounter them over the course of the journey.
Having played the game at PAX West, and giving it our Best Indie Game of PAX West 2017 award, I was excited to be able to play this game for longer than twenty minutes. Does the game live up to my expectations? Does the excitement and stories wane past those initial twenty minutes of wonder?
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, it’s a journey, based on the hope in a fabled location. El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, Atlantis, all fit into this category. While the destination is wondrous, the journey of the people who seek it is what builds their legend. Every journey needs to start somewhere and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine starts with a card game. A card game that quickly goes south for the protagonist as they quickly find themselves cursed, and bound to wander the land collecting and telling stories to lay threads of truth through the tapestry of history.
Playing Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is easy, walk across the land, visit locations, meet people, witness events, and then tell the tales of those things. Nearly all of this is done through simply listening to the voice acting and making some menu selections. Some of the people encountered will make requests for specific types of stories. Select the story that fulfills the request and uncover more of that person’s story as they open up more about themselves.
While not a challenging game to play, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine delivers in spades when it comes to atmosphere. Everything in this game works towards creating a rustic, folksy, and supernatural ambiance, and it does it very well. The art style has a rough, western, painterly look to it, using dark greens, oranges, yellows, Earth tones, and well-placed accent and highlight colors to create a comforting homey space to enjoy the game in. The soundtrack changes to reflect the local musical flavors. Composer Ryan Ike used as many live musicians as possible to recreate that feeling of sitting around the fire jamming and telling stories with friends. He also did a great job writing different versions of the same song to reflect the various areas of the United States. The voice acting puts the finishing touches on perfecting the atmosphere, particularly the narrator. His deep baritone bringing a somber, yet hopeful tone to each description and story. Perfect for listening to lots of different stories over the course of hours. It’s intimate and feels like the stories are being told only to me by a Grandfather, or respected elder. It truly reflects the era of the Great Depression and embodies American Folklore.
As stories are collected and told, occasionally tales pop back up with slight changes. Hearing these changes causes the story to evolve, and eventually becoming some of the legends that we are more familiar with today. For example, the story of a particularly effective lumberjack, eventually is told as the legend of Paul Bunyan. Watching the stories change is exciting, and really shows how oral storytelling shapes legend and myth.
The only time this well balanced and deliberate atmosphere is broken is when the game reveals itself as that. Framerate drops, assets popping in and out of existence, overlapping polygons, and game crashes happen far more often than they should. It makes it hard to enjoy all the hard work put into the Where the Water Tastes Like Wine when fighting the controls and camera to get pointed in the right direction. Considering that a good chunk of the gameplay of this game is walking from location to location, thats a glaring issue.
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is an experience, and utterly unique in its effort to deliver that experience. Tackling the way stories change over time is no easy feat to even understand, let alone try to create a game showcasing it. It isn’t a perfect game, but it is the perfect game to unwind with, to just sit back, chill. It’s truly a relaxing game to play, and I found myself smiling often while playing as every little story was engaging. through superb voice acting and wonderfully drawn characters. The music is superb, catchy, and original while still invoking the era and locales that inspired it. I regularly sang along as I walked across the land in search of stories. The recurring characters felt like seeing old friends. There are some unfortunate glitches that really hurt the ability to enjoy the atmosphere the game is trying to create. This doesn’t change the fact though that it is still a game worth checking out. To experience something new. To feel a part of something grander. To take the journey to find Where the Water Tastes Like Wine.
