Dry Drowning

Genre: Visual Novel / Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Dry Drowning is a Visual Novel with Graphic Adventure elements with gameplay that’s somewhat like the Phoenix Wright series. Players take the role of a private detective in a futuristic city-state of Nova Polemos, a totalitarian police state ruled by a far-right government whose rigidly-enforced peace is shaken by a gruesome serial killer apparently obsessed with Greek mythology (although for that matter, it seems like everything in this game has some sort of mythological reference). This game was released on PC in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021.

The presentation here is mostly quite good, with both backgrounds and characters depicted using hand-painted portraits. Many of these are quite lovely, but the game often depicts this beauty warping into grotesque monstrosities as the protagonist hallucinates. This is pretty effective at being unsettling, giving an even darker edge to a game that already takes place in a dystopia. The visuals here are accented by a nice soundtrack that’s largely acoustic instrumental music, and the intro has a voice over, though the game itself doesn’t, unfortunately.

However, I said the presentation was “mostly” good, and for the part that doesn’t quite work, I have to point to the story. For the most part, I like the story here – the game’s dark setting acts as a look at what our future could easily hold and mirrors recent trends in politics, the characters are likeable despite all being varying degrees of compromised people trying to exist in a world that clearly wasn’t made for the truly righteous, and the story’s occasional plunges into the aforementioned grotesque and surreal imagery are pretty compelling. What doesn’t quite work is this game’s occasional attempts at hard-boiled monologues, which at times seem almost like self-parody, and hamper the dark tones this game is clearly going for by seeming almost farcical in nature. It also doesn’t help that the characters at times speak in ways that don’t quite pass the believability test.

On that note, while much of this game does a good job with the Phoenix Wright-style gameplay, having players collect evidence, speak with witnesses and suspects, and confronting liars with evidence that conflicts with their claims… there are times when this gameplay doesn’t quite work. Players are able to see when a person the game’s protagonist is talking to is lying because their face distorts into a grotesque animal mask (it’s not clear why this is, but the protagonist sees it as a helpful tool in his work). In confrontations with these liars, players are only allowed three errors in challenging these lies.

However, while you sometimes have to use conflicting evidence to challenge a lie, you must also guess at the truth of a situation, and often in these situations you’re kinda’ out on a limb guessing more than you are deducing the truth based on what you know. In one such early confrontation, players know a character is lying about knowing about an affair, and must declare why that is – is the liar exploiting the situation to break up a marriage she clearly detests? Was she the one who instigated the affair to get dirt on the guy? Or is she feigning ignorance to distance herself from her own affair that’s the real source of her disgust and disdain for the man? All of these possibilities seem plausible given what we know, and players must risk their three chances taking a stab at which answer is correct.

The game also has occasional puzzles where players must use odd and nebulous clues to solve riddles left behind by the serial killer. Unfortunately, the puzzles here aren’t always clear, and players will likely feel tempted to look up solutions rather than try to figure out the killer’s odd logic.

It’s a shame that Dry Drowning’s puzzles are occasionally so cryptic or ambiguous, because overall its story, characters, and presentation are fantastic. Yes, the hard-boiled stuff is a bit over-the-top, but the game is made truly compelling by its great characters, its bleak depiction of a future totalitarian city-state, as well as its demonstration that even that dark a locale can be made even darker by adding the grotesque. Fans of Visual Novels and specifically games like Phoenix Wright who are looking for something darker may want to give this game a look. Just be aware you may want to occasionally reach for a walkthrough to bypass some of this game’s frustrations.

tl;dr – Dry Drowning is a Visual Novel with Graphic Adventure elements that plays like Phoenix Wright set in a futuristic totalitarian city-state plagued by a grotesque serial killer. The puzzles here are often overly cryptic or ambiguous, which can be pretty frustrating. However, the game is still compelling due to its setting, characters, and story, and fans of the genre may still want to give it a look

Grade: B-

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