Development
Aquaria was developed by Derek Yu and Alec Holowka over the course of two years, off of a concept that Holowka had thought of a year prior. Yu was the lead artist, and Holowka handled the programming and audio components. Both designers had previously worked in video games; Yu had made several freeware games, including I'm O.K with Holowka and others, while Holowka had worked for several video game start-ups, none of which had ever gotten a game published. The two officially formed the studio Bit Blot to back the game a week before submitting it to the 2007 Independent Games Festival. The name of the studio is intended to represent a fusion of art and technology. Aquaria is the studio's only game as of 2011. Both members of the team continue to make video games, but are not doing so as a partnership; Holowka has formed a separate team called Infinite Ammo, and Yu is again working on freeware games.
The initial prototype of the game had styling similar to a text-based role-playing game, with a large open world and many sub-quests. After moving towards "multiple-choice text answers" and a complicated gameplay system, the team decided to simplify the game and set the 2007 Independent Games Festival as a deadline to complete everything. With this time pressure, they forced themselves to cut out a lot of what they felt was unneeded complexity, bringing the game to its core. After removing many of what they decided were extraneous elements they then added back in the cooking system, which they felt fit well with the rest of the game, as well as a map system. They then developed the game world and story in a roughly linear manner, creating basic designs of each region and then coming back to fill in details. They felt that this allowed them to create interesting ideas at the beginning of the game and then fill them out and resolve them at the end. The game also includes a level and animation editor; several mods have been made for the game.
The game was developed to be able to be controlled by the player with only the mouse, after it was suggested by Yu's father. The developers felt that this control scheme forced them to make the gameplay fluid and easy to grasp, though they also added the option to control the game with a keyboard or Xbox 360 controller. Yu and Holowka considered the "hallmark" of exploratory games to be a sense of loneliness, which they made a part of the narrative, but also wanted the player to get a sense of Naija's character. To that end, they used voice-overs to demonstrate to the player what Naija was feeling during key points of the game. The voice of Naija was performed by Jenna Sharpe, who was chosen after auditioning several other voice actresses. She additionally sang the vocals for one song on the soundtrack, "Lost to the Waves". She also sang a nine-minute vocal piece especially for the release of the Aquaria soundtrack album, which was published by Bit Blot on November 14, 2009. The album features 50 tracks on two discs, including all of the music in the game as well as the new vocal track and a few remixes.
The game was released for Windows computers on December 7, 2007. A patch was later released which added new functionality to the in-game map, added widescreen support, and tweaked several game settings. A Macintosh port was released November 12, 2008, courtesy of Ambrosia Software. The game was released on Steam on December 15, 2008; it included the addition of 27 Steam Achievements. A Linux version of the game was developed by Ryan C. Gordon in 2009; an open beta ran until February 6, 2010, and the Linux version of the game was released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. The source code for the game's engine was released under the GNU General Public License on June 3, 2010. A modified version was released on the iPad on November 2, 2011. This version, which includes touchscreen support and changes to the way the map works, was created by Andrew Church, who was approached to the do the port by Holowka after he did an unofficial PlayStation Portable port.
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