Dry Drowning (2019)

Dry Drowning is a fun experience that uses its format well and has clearly been created by people with a lot of love for the genre. Even if you don’t ordinarily play visual novels, I think there’s a lot more to keep you engaged than you would expect. There’s a real sense that your choices craft the narrative and Mordred’s journey, and whilst there is a lot happening the game does a good job at keeping you on track. If you’re in the mood to play detective, you’ll definitely find something to enjoy here.

In short, playing Dry Drowning is a pleasure from all points of view: from the purely playful side, the title of Studio v proposes a visual novel formula with shades of Noir and Thriller perfectly amalgamated into a narrative that fascinates from the first moment, accompanied by an artistic sector that is simply amusing, while from the most introspective and mentally stimulating part, the game offers settings that seem to cling to us in a vice of raw realism cloaked in a dystopia that moves away from us but not too much: within these the characters and our consciences move together with theirs. Nova Polemos is truly an exasperated version of our cities, and the dilemmas that Mordred foley faces are, under a terribly human magnifying glass, the same ones we are subjected every day. Society, morals, interest are the bonds that we must bring into life as in Dry Drowning. Under the aegis of which of these will we take our steps within one of the most interesting games of recent years? And in our lives?

Dry Drowning is a dark, interactive murder mystery novel with a compelling story that is represented well on the Nintendo Switch. The otherwise gripping story is marred slightly by some poor user interface design choices but otherwise delivers everything you'd look for in a top-notch visual novel!

Dry Drowning reminds me a little of another game that I went into with absolutely no expectations, and went on to become one of my favourite games of all time: Tokyo Dark: Remembrance. Both are heavily inspired by noir and horror elements, though Tokyo Dark is Lovecraftian and Dry Drowning is more cyberpunk. Both games share a bold willingness to discomfort the audience, an interest in social commentary relevant to the real world, and an unrelenting intensity and urgency in the storytelling. I very nearly missed Dry Drowning because it very much looks like the low-budget visual novel that many other critics have accused it of being. I'm not sure what they were playing, though, because if you actually listen to what the game's saying, and pay attention to the literary genres that it belongs to, this is really quite a remarkable experience.

I was pleasantly surprised by Dry Drowning. The setting was interesting, the choices mattered, and the story was compelling enough to make me want to see it through to the end. While not all of the socio-political story elements were original, there were still plenty of mysteries and twists that kept me captivated.