Dry Drowning
Dry Drowning is an investigative thriller-oriented visual novel set in the futuristic dystopian universe of Nova Polemos. A shady socio-political situation dragging everything down to the abyss, a serial killer drawing strength from this darkness, a tormented detective and his assistant craving for redemption. Dry Drowning challenges the player to find the truth, going through ambiguous characters, riddles, clues and unexpected events, while telling an extremely compelling and mature story. Choices really matter: Players choices can lead to an always different story, with more than 150 story branches and 3 completely different endings Heavy moral choices: Dramatically change the way you live the game, affecting background politics, technology, environment, NPC encounters, who lives and who dies High replayability: More than 20 hours gameplay to see everything about Time travel: Explore the detective's flashbacks and investigate cases from the past to help you solve new ones Psychological interrogations: Break the masks and uncover the truth with the Living Nightmares system Original soundtrack: dynamic OST with more than 50 audio tracks, some of which live recorded, for more than 2 hours of music
Game Discussion
Steam User 3
This review is specially made for those who like to get all the achievements in games (minor spoilers ahead).
Description:
Dry Drowning is an indie visual novel where you play the role of a detective fallen in disgrace after fabricating evidence and condemning two innocent people when he was investigating a serial killer that resurfaced to kill again later. You will investigate the new crime scenes, now involving a prominent politician, to clear your name.
The illustrations are beautiful and heavily inspired by the classic detective film noir movies: the main characters are represented in black and white like in the old movies and only the backgrounds are colored, but the drawings still have an artistic flair and IMO some anime inspiration in the character designs.
The OST is varied and combines a mix of sad, mysterious, emotional or stress inducing songs depending on the scene and it works very well with the illustrations, creating an involving ambience. Unfortunately, the game isn’t narrated and you have to read all the content.
The gameplay is mostly just clicking to advance the story but the interrogations or “unmaskings” require attention to the details and some logical thinking to reach the right conclusions. Still, the game offers you 2 extra chances in case you make a mistake and if needed you can also restart from the previous checkpoint if you fail. The diary will prevent you from getting lost and the game only lets you move forward if you get all the evidence needed. The game also has a few different logic tasks and minigames that you need to complete to get all the achievements but they aren’t hard to figure out.
Achievements:
How many: 20 Achievements.
How much time: Between 6 to 8 hours, depending on how fast you read and solve the interrogations and mini games.
Game difficulty: Easy.
Achievements’ Difficulty: Easy. You need to finish two runs, a normal one and another new game+. It helps to save often so you can go back and complete some of the achievements. The main endings depend on the choices you make at the end of chapter 1 and chapter 3: don’t save Freya for Ending B, save Freya and refuse the deal for Ending A and accept the deal for Ending C. For the secret ending finish the last chapter with 10 logic mini-games completed and start a new game+.
Overall opinion:
Dry Drowning is an interesting visual novel with a noir film inspired aesthetic and story, with shocking crime scenes and several different endings depending on your choices. The interrogations and detective work are well-written and logic and common sense are enough to make the connections.
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Steam User 2
This is an interesting game, I loved it but I do recommend it on a sale due to it's length.
Dry Drowning is a sobering tale that nails the audio and visual art department. This is a cyberpunk/noir story that is deeply engaging and will leave you ponder about the story and decisions long after playing it.
I will agree with one of the most helpful negative review on that there are no true "good" choices in this game, but I will disagree on how this makes the game bad, it's quite the opposite. Every choice you make in this game will have visible consequences. There are a few rippling decisions in this game that will completely change character arcs and thus fleshing them out like no other story based games when you've seen all the outcomes.
Once again this is a intense but short game, but it does go on sale quite often.
Steam User 0
A fun detective game, I like the overall story, and I love that your decisions have consequences.
The main character is a stereotypical 'I'm a detective who is tormented by a cold case and I love cigarettes' which i wasn't the biggest fan of, at times the writing feels a bit edgy cringe, but I enjoyed the game overall
Steam User 2
An amazing story that really woke me up:) The plot is profoundly and logical.
I'm afraid I won't be able to finish this narrative since it has more parallels to my own life than I thought. Every decision is a tough trial...But whether we choose the front or reverse of a coin, we may just be pulling ourselves further into a bottomless chasm. Similar like the story's detective: insane or lonely. Which would you prefer—going through those difficult times with the precious love or ending up a successful, bloody murderer with scars from your wounds?