Hello Dev's(
Likho Games )
This is probably the first time I stumble upon Wet Sand, finished reading it today and man I am surprised, it's a hidden gem and definitely worth a read. I'll buy it when the full release comes out on steam.
Quick question,It's releasing on steam next year right?
Anyways here's my review of game:
I will start with the things I love about Wet Sand.
1. The genre: It's hard to find a Visual Novel in Mideval/Adventure settings, Japanese VN's rarely work with this genre and the ones available in AVN community usually lacks in writing and world building( will farther elaborate about this in the next point) so for obvious reasons Wet Sand scores a point in this area.
2. Storytelling: I'll segment this part into two different sub points..
a) World building: The world of Wet Sand seems to be detailed and vast, the map itself is very large and it being a game with piretes, ships and ocean the potential is endless, now it's depends on the Dev's if they want to deep dive into the world and explore it further or wraps it into a small but rather detailed way( I would prefer quality over quantity, a detailed but small world is better than a large but massey one with inconsistent writing)
b) Writing: The writing of Wet Sand is simple but effective, it's capable of engaging the reader with the characters immediately without giving too much inside of them, that's a sign of good writing and engaging story, though there are few problems with dialogues and characters which is not major but if they are to be improved in the future then the experience of reading them would increase 10x times.
*I'm pointing some of them here,
° Fabian(MC) is very vague and gullible at times, he lacks personality and motivation ( I glad atleast the Dev's given us some options to shape him as a character, for example how he gets annoyed by the arrogant behaviour of the princess and how he in times shuts Anna down but it's not enough to make him as Main protagonist stand out among others)
° Lauren : One of my favourite character, I really like her free spirited and caring nature which makes her very likeable, her personality shines among others but then again in her side quest to her her sister, she just comes out as empty and emotionless. The way her manipulative sister behave with Fabian is very irritating and it hurts the most when Lauren dosen't even acknowledge it which breaks her character.
° Anna: You typical annoying LI who loves to be dominated, again it's adds a flavour to the game but please give more options to put her in her place.
3. Visuals: The hand drawn 2d arts are just beautiful to watch, everything from the character design to the attantion to details, colour grading are just chef's kiss and the quality of art improved in current updates.
I wished it had more visuals , there some scenes that falls flat because of the lack of visual but again it's nothing major.