In a postmortem, indie developer Johnnemann Nordhagen spoke about his game “Where the Water Tasted Like Wine”, outlining what went well, and what went wrong.  However, on a human level, after looking at everything, the biggest bummer is, this developer has made 0$ so far in the endeavor of chasing a dream.  Now, that isn’t to say the game has sold zero copies, but after four years of development, and paying the people who worked on the game with him, Johnnemann has yet to be able to put a dollar in his own pocket.  In the same vein as a lot of indie games these days, WWTLW is a very story and character driven game wrapped in a narrative about trying to survive manifest destiny. 

While I have yet to play the game, hearing a dev has made $0 after a month+ got my attention.  After looking into the game, the visuals look gorgeous, and while I am not normally a fan of story driven, limited action style games, I must admit I am a bit curious and may take some time to support an indie dev who put four years of themselves into a project to see no returns.  Currently the game holds a 74 on metacritic from 35 critics and a 6.1 from 14 users.  I can honestly say I’ve played and enjoyed games with far worse ratings, Dynasty warriors 9 for instance… (I can’t stop playing these…help me.)  If you want to check this game out it’s available on steam and GOG, and with that, here’s some gameplay from E3 so you can make a more educated decision.