Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

As a game devoted to the art of storytelling itself, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine shines with its powerful writing, exceptional voice-acting, and its visual and aural elements that bring players back into the time of tall tales and endless stretches of road to explore. While its gameplay structure might be a bit loose for some players, the tales and characters that Where the Water Tastes Like Wine introduces make the journey to the promised land that much sweeter, even if there is no telling what is on the horizon.

You play as a wanderer, traveling across a Depression Era America with nothing more than the clothes on your back and a few coins. You stumble across a local pub and find a table where others are playing cards. You examine the players and figure why not jump in for a bit of fun? Perhaps it was fate that brought you here, however, the foolishness is your own as you naively make a bet on a poker game against an enigmatic wolf. He winks at you, asking for one last hand for a small price. You glance at your winning hand and with an air of cockiness, you quickly agree. Perhaps it was in the cards t...

Like its titular drink, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine has a distinct flavor that certain connoisseurs will really appreciate.

With a lovely art style and an entirely intriguing concept, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is unlike anything you’ll have played before. Its uniqueness makes it worthwhile, but some slow-moving elements, inconsequential mechanics and a few lacklustre stories mean it doesn’t stand out quite as much as it should.

Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is out today, and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, via Steam and itch.io for $19.99. Disclosure: former RPS columnists Cara Ellison, Leigh Alexander, and Emily Short were part of the vast writing team for the game.

Summing up my experience with Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is more complex than a numerical score can truly represent. The aesthetics, soundtrack, and writing here are wonderful and more than reward the patience required to fully unravel the game’s mysteries. Playing it resulted in an immersion that went beyond my niggles with the gameplay. It is clear from my comments here that the game won’t have the universal appeal to match the political and social importance of its themes and message. It is a game that should be played by many, but that will probably frustrate as many as it ensnares. ...

I remember when I was in grade school, learning about the tall tales of characters like Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan and completely missing the point of these legends. Unlike other stories that were birthed thousands of years ago or had huge volumes dedicated to their analysis, the phenomenon of the “American Tall Tale” was a relatively new concept that grew out of the country’s rapid expansion. But that was about where my interest in these more modern-day myths came to an abrupt end. Thankfully, Where The Water Tastes Like Wine explores this phenomenon in more depth through the lens of eme...

A story packed adventure which spans across the USA, with some wonderfully written stories, a fantastic soundtrack, and some sublime voice acting. However, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is let down by a map that is too large often resulting in a lot of time spent walking, doing nothing.

Drink full and descend.

An overview of American history in which realism clashes with the supernatural, and time is definitely not of the essence.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is an anthology where you trek across 1930s America as you try to settle your debt to the wolf man.

There's a pervasive sense of disappointment to When the Water Tastes Like Wine. For all its invention and forward-thinking, there's a profound feeling that the mark has been missed. In truth, it does very little to justify itself as a video game in the first place, given that most of the player's time is spent moving painfully slowly across a monotonous, samey map of America with no clearly defined goal. It's a failed experiment through and through, but all the more painful because it could have been so much more. There is space in gaming for narrative output like this, but they need to be car...