Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a Narrative-Adventure game about traveling, sharing stories, and surviving manifest destiny. Featuring gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine combines 2D visuals with a 3D overworld US map.
As an interesting intellectual exploration of the role that word-of-mouth plays in storytelling, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine plays like a proof of concept that never graduated beyond an initial prototyping stage. Sure, it has plenty of narratives to uncover, but ultimately the repetitive, shallow mechanics prevent the experience from meeting its...
I do think Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is worth a gander, just don’t expect a swan song of a tale or gut punch metaphor about early America. Enjoy it for it what it immediately offers: a fun series of tiny vignettes and discoverable characters to unwind with. Forget the rest.
An inspired attempt at something new, like an Americana graphic novel read through at a snails pace. The lovely meditative quality to the gameplay eventually becomes somewhat frustrating because of repetition, the limitations of the concept and how much the player can interact with the characters and stories. Regardless of these shortcomings, anyone...
There is space in gaming for narrative output like this, but they need to be carefully tailored to be games first and experiences second. You don't even want to know what this water tastes like.
An enjoyable take on visual novels and other story-driven games, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a pleasant little game indeed.
