Dry Drowning Switch Review – Become A Private Detective

Visual novel games are certainly an acquired taste. Luckily, I rather enjoy them. I don’t think there’s anything more relaxing than settling down into bed or on the sofa of an evening and playing through a visual novel, reading word for word and becoming hooked on the story. This is exactly the way I felt playing through Dry Drowning – relaxed and engrossed.

However, is this a title worth your cold, hard cash? Or is this title dry drowning? Let’s find out!

Dry Drowning is a psychological investigation visual novel set in a futuristic cyberpunk-like city. Taking the role of Mordred Foley, a private detective with a dark past, you will explore the city of Nova Polemas chasing the tail of a serial killer inspired by Greek Mythology. You will investigate several murders aiming to bring down this ruthless killer once and for all.

The story in Dry Drowning is definitely an interesting one. It’s a little bit of a slow starter, but when you get into the good stuff (like investigating murders), you will be unable to put it down from there.

The investigative portion of the gameplay is simple, yet effective. It plays in a point & click manner: investigating crime scenes; looking for clues and putting it all together to figure out just what has happened. Highlighted areas show what can be investigated, so it’s pretty easy to know where you need to look. When all the clues have been found, you usually are required to move to another area and question some people. Again, direct questions are given for you to follow through. It’s easy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. It’s the story that you’re really interested in.

The gameplay follows a pretty simple routine: investigate murder, talk to suspects, establish the reasonings behind it, and with it ending the chapter with a pretty significant choice to make.

Dry Drowning does feature many decisions throughout the story that can and will impact many parts of your journey. Whether that be negative or positive, there’s no going back. At certain points, you will be required to choose out of two outcomes – and it’s usually a pretty important subject. Doing so will alter the narrative slightly, usually hurting someones feeling in the process. Of course, at other times there are more pressing decisions to make such as choosing which character should live or die. Those are the tough ones.

The game also has a unique feature in which your character, Mordred, will be able to tell when any character is lying to him. He does this by seeing the character wearing a pretty spooky looking mask when they are dishonest. It’s not a groundbreaking feature, but I found it to be pretty cool.

At one or two points during each chapter, you will be required to partake in a sort of mini-game in which you have to break apart a suspects testimony by providing them with evidence that does so. You have three lives in which to do this, but it’s not something you’re going to struggle with. The answers are pretty self-explanatory.

Dry Drowning features a hand-painted art style that is very dark and dingy, and it does look great. The year is 2066 and so it features a very futuristic vibe, with a lot of bright lights and machines. The text in the game is a little on the small side and can sometimes be a little difficult to see, but it didn’t affect the experience too much. I did notice a few grammatical and punctuation errors in the narrative, but again, this didn’t affect my overall experience.

The sounds in Dry Drowning is pretty non-existent. Other than the looped pieces of music or sound effects to go along with what’s going on, it will be just you and the words on the screen. The looped music does do a good job of setting the tone though, which must be said. It would have been nice to have some voiced narrative in the game to give it a little more personality, but that’s just me being picky.

Overall, Dry Drowning is a good addition to the visual novel genre. The Private Investigating gameplay was really interesting and the story did get me hooked. I mean, it did help that anything with serial killers fascinates me. I do think it is a little overpriced for the hours of gameplay you get (roughly 8 hours for one playthrough), and I think a £15.99 price point would have been more suitable. Other than that, I highly recommend this one.

Dry Drowning Review provided by Nintendo Link
Developer: Studio V, VLG
Publisher: Vigamus Leonardo
Release Date: February 22, 2021
Price: £22.49, $24.99
Game Size: 1685.00 MB