Watcha Playin’? Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

For this first ever Watcha Playin’? column, I’m going to be giving my working thoughts on Dim Bulb Games’ Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. For context, WTWTLW is a visual novel/walking sim hybrid where your goal is to travel across the United States gathering stories to eventually craft a wider narrative. You encounter places and events that become part of your story collection, and meet characters, some of whom were written by big names in the industry like Austin Walker, Gita Jackson, and Leigh Alexander, who you recite these stories to.

So far, I’ve only encountered two of these characters, but both of them have been interesting and enjoyable to spend time with. The mechanic of telling stories to these people is simultaneously one that I enjoy, and that I struggle the most with. To get closer to these characters and unlock chapters of their storylines, you have to tell them the kinds of stories they want to hear, i.e. a sad one, or something cheerful. I don’t have a problem with the concept at all, in fact, it makes a good amount of sense. The part I’m struggling with is the stories themselves.

Since I’m not very far in yet, I don’t have a ton of stories to choose from, and for whatever reason, most of the ones I’ve collected are either sad or scary. That’s fine for a character like Quinn, who loves to be frightened and excited, but kind of sucks when talking to Mason because he just wants someone to make him feel like the world isn’t so god damned bleak. With the stories I’ve got right now, I am not the person to do that for him. While it’s somewhat frustrating on a gameplay level, I do like that it reflects the reality of the world you’re in. Happy stuff just isn’t as common around here, so you have to treasure the good things when you can find them.

The other issue I’m having is that even though  I’m not all that far along yet, I still have enough stories that it gets tricky to remember what each one entails. Most of the ones I collected on my first night are almost impossible for me to remember the context of, and you can only see the basic title of the story when you’re trying to tell it. There’s no description or anything like that, so I’ve ended up telling a scary story when I meant to tell something sweet, or a nice story when my audience was looking for something thrilling. I probably just need to start keeping a spreadsheet of what everything is so I can keep track.

Despite these difficulties, I’m absolutely in love with this game so far. Its whole concept is so interesting and right up my alley (I’m real into narrative games, if you haven’t noticed). Plus, the mechanics overall are really creative and fun. Walking around the U.S. as a skeleton in search of stories to a rad folk soundtrack is relaxing, and I’m always excited to see what the next story I find is going to be. I also really love how they captured the way oral traditions work. Once you tell someone a story, you’ll most likely hear a wild, exaggerated version of it at some point in your travels. it’s cool to see a game engage with how storytelling in the real world works and make it part of the fabric of the experience.

I’m excited to keep exploring this game, and especially to see how it will all culminate in the end.