Aquaria (video game)

Aquaria is an indie computer game company Bit Blot, LLC in the year 2007.

• 4.1 Ports

• 5.1 Prizes and Awards

Gameplay

Aquaria belongs to the genre of action adventure games on, is kept in 2D and uses the side perspective showing the game action, which ( eg temples ) takes place almost exclusively in a huge underwater world with different regions and structures. The player can use a variety of offensive and defensive spells, which are collected throughout the game. For this purpose, a melody is learned usually always first, which then must leave by the logical Press resound of colored icons of the players. Furthermore, shape change and the interaction of a variety of creatures and objects in the world are possible and necessary. The free exploring the virtual world is an essential part of the game concept, since there are no problems here and the player will thus be continued only by the discovery of new regions and objects in the story. For this purpose, it is often necessary to consult again with new skills learned previously visited areas to open there, for example, previously blocked paths. Because of this and also because you can swim along different directions and paths most of the time, the game is not linear. In addition to the normal friendly and very often less friendly to creatures occur at intervals on so-called bosses that need to be brought down, for to advance in the game. Aquaria contains some RPG elements, such as collecting objects in an inventory or the production of food by mixing different ingredients.

Back story

The player controls Naija, a young mermaid who is in search of her past. In the course of the game, Naija's lost memory sets by individual pieces of the puzzle back together. But the search for their history is difficult, because the farther they ventured out of the familiar climes, the more dangerous is their plan. Enemies have defeated won allies and puzzles to be solved.

Game art

Graphic

Aquarias graphics were hand drawn and have a colorful, cartoon-like style. Various lighting and special effects contribute to the dense atmosphere in the underwater world. The same applies to the background music of the game, which is kept quiet and classical for the most part. Speech is present only in the form of Naija's voice. The game comes with the original level editor that allows the user to create their own worlds.

History of development

On the development of the game, which has taken over two years to complete, only two people were involved. For the development of the game engine Alec Holowka was responsible. This also worked on the graphics and furthermore was responsible for the sound effects. Derek Yu took over the task of creating the artwork and graphics to the game.

Aquaria was released as a download version in the Digital Distribution in the form of a setup exe. Also download the game has been released on the platform " Steam ." About a retail version was thinking, but this has not been produced to date. The original soundtrack has been released as a music CD.

Ports

The Macintosh version was published in 2008 by Ambrosia Software. In 2009 a Linux version for the Humble Indie Bundle has been ported by Ryan C. Gordon. Also the source code of the game was subsequently released under the GNU General Public License. In November 2011, the game was released in AppStore for the iPad. This iPad version comes from Andrew Church, which was requested by Holowka this port to perform after he had created an unofficial PlayStation Portable version. Later appeared on the basis of the available source code and community patches to fix bugs that try remaining and further improve the game.

Reception

Prizes and awards

Aquaria in 2007 was awarded to the Independent Games Festival with the " Seumas McNally Grand Prize " for the best indie game. There it was nominated " in Visual Art Excellence" in the category " Design Innovation", " Excellence in Audio" and. Also in the trade press as well as the gaming community, the game was mostly well received.