Watercolors for Windows

A free game about death and the ocean

Watercolors is a free simulation video game about accepting death. Developed by falpal, this indie game is a short and contemplative interactive fiction that immerses you into a surreal text-based journey. Rather than a proper game with a direction, you start off with so many available paths to take and the game simply pulls you in. This game is pretty short depending on your reading speed but is highly atmospheric despite its simplistic gameplay.

Not your average text game

Watercolors start off with the background of a pixelated setting sun at an unnamed beach. A description of the environment is displayed in simple text over the background, just like in text-based adventure games. Some of the words are in purple rather than black and this means that you can click these to proceed to the next set of texts or the next area. Unlike most text games, however, the descriptions here are flowery and poetic.

What makes this minimalistic interactive fiction interesting is its overall theme. By exploring each of the available purple links, you can unlock various death scenes that are more profound in nature rather than violent or tragic—all thanks to the flowery prose of the writing. Finding a death scene doesn’t end the game, however, so you can keep exploring until all links are exhausted and you can no longer click on anything.

Accompanying the fluid descriptive text is an ambient atmosphere and soundtrack. At first, you’re only hearing the crashing of the waves as you explore the text options. Once you unlock your first death, though, the music finally kicks in and an instrument gets added for every subsequent death you get. Everything comes to a crescendo once you’ve reached the true ending. This is why it’s recommended to play this with headphones.

A different kind of VN

All in all, Watercolors is a relaxing yet deeply-rich visual novel about understanding the end of things. It’s easy to play and only requires you to be patient as you keep on exploring each available link to find any changes in the text. The writing can be a bit daunting, however, as it’s highly poetic and may not be everyone’s type of reading material. Additionally, your antivirus program may flag the game as a harmful file.