Hi folks,

This patch should fix the video playback issues that players on Linux were experiencing. Please let me know if you see any problems.

Hi folks,

You may be wondering about the latest update to the game! This is a maintenance update with a few good bug fixes in it - the biggest one is a fix for the problem some players saw where they could not find all the stories in the game. In addition, vignettes are better randomized, some performance updates, other minor bugs, and the engine was updated to a newer version in order to make things run better and be easier to fix in the future. This should hopefully also fix the crash some users were seeing with newer MacOS versions.

Thanks for playing, and please let me know if you experience any new problems.

We're incredibly excited to announce that the Gold Mountain content update is now available. Free for everyone who owns Where The Water Tastes Like Wine on Steam, the Gold Mountain update introduces new tales focusing on the experience of Chinese Americans and their impact on American history and culture. It also introduces full Chinese language support thanks to the amazing work of a wonderful Chinese localization team led by Ryan Zhang.

The update also introduces a variety of performance and quality-of-life improvements, including the following:

• General bug fixes and Quality of Life Improvements
  
• Improved Performance
  
• Fixes to Story Locations
  
• Improved controls
  
• Addresses several localization bugs and issues
  

Today's Deal: Save 60% on Where the Water Tastes Like Wine!*

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*Offer ends Wednesday at 10AM Pacific Time

It is always a hope for a creator that their work can be appreciated widely, across the divide of different countries and languages.


When we released this game, we are were pleased to see the passionate, excited fans who love the game, and to share American folklore and history with the world.


Some fans go above and beyond, and create their own art, or writing, or other work of their own to pay homage to the game.


Some of them speak multiple languages, and decide to translate the game into their own language. This is no small undertaking - Where the Water Tastes Like Wine has almost a million words, and the writing in the game is based very strongly on American culture and history. It is also beautiful and poetic, something often difficult to capture in translation.


A wonderful Chinese localization team, led by Ryan Zhang, has spent four months to translate the entire game, plus the lyrics to the soundtrack, for players in China. We are humbled and gratified by this, and we hope that Chinese players can play and enjoy our game, and understand our criticism of and reflection on America history and American culture.
Ryan

We know that China has its own wonderful and varied folklore in its thousands of years of history, and we hope that players there find our relatively small and brief American history and folklore to be interesting to them.


In addition, to honor the millions of Chinese-Americans generally overlooked in American history, we are also writing new stories for the game that focus more on the role of Chinese-Americans in the US. From miners in California to the railroad workers who bridged the continent to a whole host of other folks, Chinese immigrants have played a huge role in building this country. We're happy to be able to write more exploring their stories.


Today I am happy to release the free Chinese version of Fireside Chats, and to announce that we will release the full Chinese version of the game once we have finished the new content.


Thank you all for playing!

Hi Folks,

As a free companion game to WTWTLW, we've released "Fireside Chats". This contains new stories told by each of the 16 characters, plus the full first chapter conversation with Dire Wolf. This content is new and not seen in the full game.

You can find it here.

Thank you again for playing, and I hope you enjoy all these new tales, as well.

We've released some new stories by some new writers! In the latest update you'll find 15 new vignettes scattered around the country, ranging from the terrifying to the disgusting to the hilarious. All of them are voiced once again by the talented Keythe Farley.

In addition, we've fixed a few bugs, and added an autowalk mode - Press the F key on keyboard, or the right bumper on controller to walk steadily forward without needing to hold the key or stick.

Thank you for playing!

Hi!

Today I'm putting in a change that will hopefully smooth out the story distribution. Instead of having all of the stories in a spot show up right away, some of them will only appear once you're further along the main task.

This will mean that visiting places you've already been will be more interesting, and that you won't get more stories than you know what to do with early on.

As always, please let me know about feedback or bugs in the forum!

Thanks for playing.

Hi!

Today I'm putting in a change that will hopefully smooth out the story distribution. Instead of having all of the stories in a spot show up right away, some of them will only appear once you're further along the main task.

This will mean that visiting places you've already been will be more interesting, and that you won't get more stories than you know what to do with early on.

As always, please let me know about feedback or bugs in the forum!

Thanks for playing.

HI folks! Today's patch adds more tutorialization, including an in-game manual! Press D-Pad up or H on the keyboard to view it. Please let me know if you think anything in there could be clarified or expanded.

In addition, mousewheel should work on the story swap screen now, and I've fixed a few other minor bugs. As always, please feel free to give me your feedback, suggestions, or bug reports and I will do my best to help.

Thanks for playing!

HI folks! Today's patch adds more tutorialization, including an in-game manual! Press D-Pad up or H on the keyboard to view it. Please let me know if you think anything in there could be clarified or expanded.

In addition, mousewheel should work on the story swap screen now, and I've fixed a few other minor bugs. As always, please feel free to give me your feedback, suggestions, or bug reports and I will do my best to help.

Thanks for playing!

Hi all!

This patch should fix a number of minor/major bugs, including the problems with camera control, some missing voice lines, and similar things. If you encounter a bug, please report it in the forums or via email, and I'll keep fixing them!

The next update will focus on tutorializing some things that people have been misunderstanding, and making the learning process easier. If you have suggestions, please post in the forums.

Thanks for playing!

Hi folks,

This is a big one - we've heard the concerns from players and reviewers about the speed of travel, especially in the late game. As a result, there are two new features:

The items in your inventory that you collect as mementos of talking to characters can now be used to return to the place that you first met those characters. For instance, Ray's rib-bone flute will transport you to near Denver, Quinn's bandana to outside Boston.

Secondly, once you're past halfway in the game (once you've either finished half the characters or gotten halfway through all the characters) the fast travel options in the cities will travel substantially farther distances, and hopefully enable you to reach far-flung places more easily than in the past.

More changes will be coming to improve the later part of the game and to spread the stories and exploration more evenly, but this should help some.

Thanks for playing!

Hi!

We have another patch for you - this one improves performance across the board, fixes a number of reported bugs, and improves the game end experience.

I also changed the way the camera works if you use mouse and keyboard - zoom is now controlled by the mouse wheel instead of mouse movement.

Also, there is a "Next Track" control now - press right on the d-pad (or "N" on keyboard) to start the next regional music track playing.

Thanks for playing! To learn exactly what changed with the end game, read on...

*minor end-of-game spoilers follow*
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Instead of being automatically transported to see the Wolf once you finish the stories of all the other characters, you will instead be put back on the map so you can collect more stories, arrange your story inventory, or just explore as much as you like, and you can initiate the final conversation with him at any time.

Hi all,

I've added the most-requested option, which is sliders to control UI SFX, Music, and Voice separately. We also recategorized some stories that were confusing folks, and added extra keybinds to make playing with mouse/keyboard easier.

I'm still looking at more improvements and fixes to some bugs, more will be coming! If you encounter a problem, please share in our Steam forum and I'll add it to the list.

Thanks for playing!

Hi folks! Thanks so much for playing the game!

We have seen a few bugs crop up as the game hits a wider audience, and so we'll be doing some fixes in the next few days. This first patch addresses some minor issues like typos, localization fixes, problems with train travel, and not being able to launch the Credits from the main menu, but in the next few days we'll be adding some feature requests, like the ability to control the volume of music, voice, and SFX separately, improving the end-game experience, and taking a look at the performance issues some folks have been seeing.

Thanks again!
Johnnemann

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is Now Available on Steam and is 15% off!*

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a Narrative-Adventure game about traveling, sharing stories, and surviving manifest destiny.

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