Gray Skies, Dark Waters

Just finished my intial play through of GSDW, the debut title from Green Willow Games. A fanciful yet grounded tale with attractive visuals and a quick playthrough time, good for a pick up evening of gaming. I look forward to exploring some of the other choices in the future!

[b]The real question is...are three onions too many onions?[/b] As we grow up and connect to our family and friends we can not see a version of ourselves not meeting and knowing them. If you, for any reason, fall away from each other it will be hard but you still hold that growth and memories. You still know what was going on before you two fell apart and assume they are still living their lives. When they die it is worse but you know that with all your grief they do not have to deal with their hardships anymore. But what they mysteriously disappear? Still leaving traces of their existence but not what happened to them, why they disappeared and this can plague you. When even the police is baffled, what can you do other than try and find out yourself. You play as Lina Garret during the one year anniversary of her mother’s, Vivian, disappearance. Knowing that before this, all seemed fine and happy so why suddenly leave. In need for answers, Lina ventures out and tries to piece together the little information available to figure it out. Not just for herself, but for her father, Robert, and her siblings Violet, Gus, and Merle. Going into the Life is Strange, Gone Home inspiration of finding out the story through others and by objects around the world. You mostly go through the motions as Lina’s thoughts are available to listen to as more information about her family surfaces. Having great moments here and there, one of my favorites being right at the start, and having great writing certainly helps. While they do give you information, you get to piece together how each family member is, with their possessions and when we meet them, and how they dealt with the lose of Vivian. As not everyone is in the same place, and you do need to venture out sometime, you are given tasks to do. Whether it be something your family asked or something Lina wants to do, some are necessary with a few not. With a little over two hours you will spend in this universe, they did a good job making all the characters stand out from one another. There are choices scattered around the dialogue, mostly leading towards a new line added in and that specific family member having a different opinion of you. I’m not entirely sure that these early choices do matter other than how the family members think of you now, but the last few choices do matter a lot. There was a task where you had to find your father’s phone and return it, and while it seems like you need to for some information you would of gotten, you can totally hold onto it and accidently trigger the ending if you don’t talk to him before a certain task. I can almost imagine Lina forgetting that she had the phone the whole time and her father giving in and buying a new one. There are other choices in whether or not you want to talk about certain things and this is driven by how curious you are. With a lot of speculation you will probably have, as even the game will question you on it for Lina to believe, curiosity certainly holds this game together. Considering that there are three endings you can get, with possible alternates to all of them. The art is absolutely amazing. The backgrounds and environment is all hand drawn resembling paintings. Each area having it’s own personality added in showing that real people live in the house and live in the town Lina resides in. Expertly making the 2d environment look 3d and their hard work paid of. The only downside is the character models that inhabit this area. It certainly was a risk that did not pay off greatly. The models seem really awkward as they try to look like they are sitting on that totally not drawn couch and could of used more animation to make them not as stiff. This makes me wish that either everything was hand drawn, the style was changed to make the models fit in more, or that everything was modeled. Now while the voice acting is good, the quality of the sound is not. Varying in quality between dialogues as you can tell which lines were recorded on the same day or not as you go deeper into the game. Some will have an echo effect, most accompanying Lina, or have a loud noise in the background making it hard to hear what they are saying, and rarely have a nice and clear quality. This is even more noticeable when quality switches in the middle of the conversation, wishing that the whole game had that clear quality. Going into the commentary they did say what they looked for when they were looking for voices (some sound quality here suffered as well, with one of the people presented was notably hard to hear their voice). Explaining that they used different recording studios when the actors, which I believe were in plays at the time, had time. With a later line saying that they had one hell of a time stabilizing all the recordings. Now I don’t know if it was the differing equipment that was used in each session they had, if it was intentional, or they just couldn’t exactly get them sounding great excluding a couple in post, but it does take away from the experience. Voice acting is one of the main focus points, and while I am happy they were able to actually get voice actors with they little funding they received, I wished they didn’t or at least went over it and found the problem before they couldn’t fix it. In contrast, the soundtrack is great all throughout the game. Having a nice melody as you walk through each scene and dimming as you talk with others. Especially loving the ending credits song. I, and I’m sure others, will wait eagerly for the soundtrack dlc to release on July 7th. [h1]Overall[/h1] + Art + Story +/- Character models +/- Voice quality Gray Skies, Dark Waters is really one of those games that does well but aspects of it can take away from the experience for many. Becoming a maybe game as the story and writing is just as important as the voice acting and quality. It does a good job with anything relating to story, the hand drawn backgrounds, and soundtrack, but not so well with having different quality of sound for their voice work and having their character models look like they are from and belong in that world. Though I do recommend checking this out to see the story unfold in front of you, whether it be now or later. [code] [url=http://saveorquit.com/author/ripwitch/] 💜 Check out my other reviews at SaveorQuit! 💜 [/url][/code]

https://niveloculto.com/analisis-gray-skies-dark-waters Los Garrett nunca imaginaron que su vida iba a dar un giro tan escabroso como para ser la comidilla de vecinos y periódicos locales. Familia modélica, aunque extraña, sufren la pérdida de la madre: Vivian, desaparecida sin dejar rastro. Un año después del suceso Lina, la mayor de los cuatro hijos, decide descubrir el misterio que se encuentra tras la desaparición. Para serles sincera, cuando me ♥♥♥♥ frente a Gray Skies, Dark Waters, lo hice sin demasiadas expectativas. Sabía que se trataba de una aventura gráfica – género que disfruto enormemente por norma general – pero hubo una serie de factores que me impidieron emocionarme desde el primer momento. No obstante, la emoción llegó a mitad del juego cuando la trama empezó a coger carrerilla y todos los hilos del inicio iban tomando forma poco a poco. El primer punto que me hizo torcer el gesto jugando a Gray Skies, Dark Waters fue el guión. La historia es estupenda, tremendamente elaborada y documentada, sin espacio para cabos sueltos a la hora del final. No obstante, destapé el pastel casi en la primera hora de juego. Quizá sea algo intencionado por parte del estudio – tengo mis dudas – pero me hubiese gustado llevarme la sorpresa casi al final más que casi al principio. Bien es verdad que a pesar de descubrir el desenlace, los acontecimientos te permiten volver a tomar las riendas de la historia con ganas de conocer la parte intermedia que lleva a ese gran final. Por otro lado, el lenguaje que se ha empleado para la elaboración de los diálogos es bastante sencillo y sin resultar sobrecargado, lo que se agradece muchas veces en obras del género. Además, estos diálogos permiten escoger distintas opciones para responder al personaje con el que estamos interactuando, lo que dará lugar a distintos finales según aquellas opciones que hayamos tomado en las cuatro horas de camino. El segundo punto que más que desagradarme me dejó un poco confusa fue el contraste entre los preciosos escenarios dibujados a mano con unos personajes modelados en 3D que, para mi gusto, desentonan en demasía. De nuevo, es posible que el estudio eligiese este “estilo” intencionadamente ya que muchas aventuras gráficas clásicas siguen este mismo patrón en cuanto a estética. Las mecánicas de juego son básicamente andar, recoger objetos y disfrutar de todo lo que tendremos que leer. Quizá esto sea lo más bonito del género de aventura gráfica, que llega un punto en que parece que la delgada línea que separa realidad y fantasía se difumina y te descubres sumergido en una historia que bien podría ser un libro leído en voz alta; ya saben, la magia de los videojuegos. A través de la mirada de Lina Garrett, viviremos una historia de fantasía en escala de grises y descubriremos la pequeña ciudad de Virginia en la que la leyenda toma forma humana. Y es que toda la trama está construida a través de la leyenda conocida como swan maiden o, en español, la “doncella cisne”. Son muchas las referencias en las que podemos pensar sobre los orígenes de esta historia, tantas como culturas podamos imaginar, pues los mitos metamórficos siempre han acompañado la historia folclórica del hombre. Sin embargo, parece ser que las versiones más cercanas a la trama desarrollada por el estudio Green Willow Games se encuentran en los mitos germánicos y nórdicos: una niña cisne que sale del agua para transformarse en una figura humana ataviada con un traje con sus plumas, vestimenta que le otorga el poder de volar y volver al lugar del que ha venido. Con una trama como la descrita, no podía faltar una música acorde: la belleza de las suaves notas del piano ponen la guinda al melancólico y sobrenatural universo de los Garrett. Es una melodía recurrente que, sin palabras, nos habla del dolor por la pérdida de un ser querido y, en consecuencia, del color del mundo para quienes estaban unidos a esa persona y se han quedado atrás. Los creadores de esta estupenda historia son Green Willow Games, un estudio de videojuegos formado por estudiantes de la Universidad de Virginia. Elizabeth Ballou, graduada por la Universidad de Viriginia en 2014, fue contactada por los demás miembros del equipo para dar forma a la historia que después se convertiría en Gray Skies, Dark Waters. De lo que parecía ser un pequeño equipo de estudiantes terminó naciendo un grupo de unas veinte personas – quizá algunas más – que han contribuido a convertir un sueño realidad: la creación de videojuegos. Después de una exitosa campaña en Kickstarter con una recaudación de 2.404 dólares – la meta eran 1.100 – y conseguir la aprobación en Steam Greenlight, el juego salió a la venta el pasado mes de junio. El desarrollo del juego ha sido en paralelo de las carreras y ocupaciones de los estudiantes, lo que tiene todavía más mérito. En sus propias palabras: “Hemos conseguido sacar el juego adelante cuando todos nos decían que era imposible ya fuera por edad, inexperiencia o, incluso, género.” La experiencia de Green Willow Games pone una vez más de manifiesto que debemos hacer aquello que realmente queremos hacer, por mucho que nos tachen de locos o irresponsables. La única barrera en la mayoría de casos somos nosotros mismos. Reserven cuatro horas de sus agendas y disfruten de Gray Skies, Dark Waters, si les da la gana.

A charming, albeit a bit short game that definitly deservers more recognition. The voice recordings sometimes sound a bit off, but that's probably because it was a low budget production. The drawings, music and story are beautiful. Well done :)

if you dont want to read the review I will link my video at the end Grey skies, dark waters A game whose backgrounds are beautifully drawn. Where it feels like your walking through impressive drawings that are real enough to make you feel that you are in a world but not completely realistic. It is the main strength of this piece of work but just as a symphony needs all its pieces together to be perfect so does a game and unfortunately not all the pieces play together to make that perfect symphony. It is the characters where the first few pieces fall apart. They aren’t drawn like the background they are rendered with computers with eyes so dead that you would be staring into and abyss rather than eyes. It’s a shame that the characters stick out like a Picasso between ancient Greek architecture. The character dialogue is overall well written and makes you feel for the characters in this tale but where is most stories you see the characters grow over time here you only get to know them. The story is so short that there is no room for growth of change, they stay at the same place and never change. Lastly the voice acting, this is a hit and miss, like a drunk violinist it manages to sometimes play beautiful notes but overall it leaves a bad taste in your mouth for you know they could have done better. Even though the story and gameplay make it a fun game and does ask for more there are parts in this game that make the experience less. It’s like a beautiful symphony that gets ruined by a drunk violinist and a conductor that seem lost to what the symphony is playing. If you like story based games and can handle a short play this is one for you otherwise if the things I pointed out annoy you too much then this game is not for you, otherwise take a look and maybe you will be leaving with an orchestra playing swan lake for you. my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcKAscEfYxc

I loved this game. It's completely story-driven, but your choices affect what happens in the story. It has a very interesting mystery that you must unravel, and the solution to the mystery is something unique and original. Additionally, the beautiful music and artwork really drew me in and had me playing for hours without realizing it. Such a beautiful story and game. Would highly recommend.

[b]I hear a lark, The woods are dark, I put my fingers on the bark. I like these trees, They're near the sea, I like the way they set me free. I ask them why, I sometimes cry, When the silver moon is in the sky. But they don't say, They never say, And so I always go away.[/b] I love story driven games, and this one was set in a fictional small town in Virginia known as Avett's Landing. The game even reminded me of Life is Strange at times, especially as it went on to uncover more details to add to the story. Visually the game is great, nothing mind-blowing but that's because every scene is a hand-drawn painting like you'd expect from your kids' book illustrations, which really add to the overall theme of the game. Nothing but the character in the game are something that moves, everything else is just still in a painting, so I'd suggest seeing gameplay of couple minutes before picking it up. To me, I didn't even know it was going to be like that when I bought it since I went in blind, and while it did put me off for a bit upon discovering that when I launched the game, that feeling went away quicker than it came and I ended up appreciating the artwork in this amazing story. Coming to soundtrack, this game kept me satisfied through and through in that regard. There's a very very nice variety of instrumentals playing in background in the entirety of the game, even when someone is talking, it's playing in background but it is never intrusive at all; if anything, it actually soothes you down while you learn new twists and such throughout the game. And when you finish the game, there's one song plays that made me want to see through the credits happily because it was that good, I'd definitely suggest checking out the OST for this game, I bought the Deluxe Edition of the game from Steam so I received the Art Book as well as the Soundtrack of the game; I'd suggest you do the same since it's not that much more expensive at all. Now comes to the strongest point of this game, story. Without it the game wouldn't have fared well at all, which is true for majority of the titles out there but personally for me, in a point and click game like this, if I wasn't delivered a decent story then I would've been sorely disappointed. But alas, that wasn't the case here. It starts off light which reminds me a bit of a recently played indie title, Virginia, since the story revolves around a missing person -- but as you play it a bit more, interact with things, talk to other characters, some twists starts to come out that you wouldn't have been expecting at all, I really was just thinking this was going to end up like something what I experienced from Gone Home since that was also set in the house and told the story by interacting with objects around the house, but nope. In favor of not spoiling it for anyone, I won't go into details of the twists but I will say it, just when you think you had it all figured out because you're smarty pants like that with the twists, they throw you another one in the end to mess up the whole theory you had in mind, leaving you a choice in the game to make the decision of what you thought of all the information that you came to know, which opens a few options to your imaginations but I really liked the one I picked, which we can discuss in comments if anyone else has played the game already with appropriate spoiler tags mentioned. This baby was made by a small but talented team that was formed out of University of Virginia, and this was also their debut title, the guys behind it are Green Willow Games. Hell, they even used the 'personal edition 'of Unity to make this game, which was quite fun and made me share it with a friend of mine freshly getting into CS and interested in working with games as a hobby, tools like these really gives masses the freedom to play around with their creativity. This game just proves it once again, you do not really need state of the art gameplay or realistic graphics to make a great game, as long as you have a right story to go along, it can really deliver a fulfilling experience, which is what indie games are really all about for the most part. This is a slow paced game, so if you are into sitting back and spend 2-3hrs of your time for an 'experience' instead of playing war simulators like CoD, Battlefield and such, then you're in for a treat. Instead of watching a few episodes of your favorite TV show, you can spend playing this game instead and will walk away with an experience that is told through some of the best movies out there, I know I did and I definitely recommend this game, it's super cheap to pick up on Steam and with specs that doesn't even require a dedicated GPU to run, anyone and everyone can afford to play this game and be content with it.

Gray Skies, Dark Waters tells an interesting story shaped by some of your choices about myths and mental health. Dialogues recording are uneven and could use some polish but hey, it's an indie game. Give it some love.