Virginia is a single player story that takes place in 1992 in an isolated town called Kingdom. You play as FBI agent Anne Tarver, trying to solve the mystery of a boy from town who vanished, but what you think you see is not the whole truth…
General Gameplay
The game play is all about telling a story, and you as the player are following the flow of the story’s path. You may think “I’ve done this already”, but this game has no dialog, nor any type of text to tell you what is going on. In essence, the game is about discovery and being part of the story.
Audio
There is great ambient background music that fits the story, as well as sounds that make the game come alive. As before, do not expect any type of dialog from the game as Virginia uses visuals to tell the story. The game does support 5.1 surround sound and it also sounds great through the headphones. In our play test there were no issues for anyone in our gaming family playing the game.
Visuals
The game is a unique style of visuals. Some may say that it is more reminiscent of a game from the late 90’s; others may say that it’s a strange fruit of a visual style. What we can say that is it done beautifully with its visuals. The game relies on almost 90% of the visual cues to the player in this style, and this is where the developer got it right. The game uses facial cues from NPC (Non-Playable Characters) to tell the story and also environmental objects as well. This is one of those games in which you have to pay attention to see what is going on. In our play test we did not see any issues for those who are colorblind to play the game. Also, in our special needs test, no one had any issues with the visuals.
Controls
Virginia controls are very simple; there’s only one button for interaction, and the left and right sticks allow you to move and look around. The game controls are made to be simple so they don’t take away from telling the story of the game. There is no need for any type of special controller, and the controls are very user friendly
“Virginia is one of those games that is a beautiful mix of storytelling and emotional dialog and without saying a word”
Delivery
This is where Virginia is interesting. The game has no audio dialog… yes, you are reading this correctly! No audio dialog what so ever. The game uses visual and facial cues to tell the story. Now for some, this may be a turn-off for a game that is very story-driven, but in Virginia this works and works well. Imagine you were reading a book; when reading, you don’t know what the characters’ voices sound like, and this is how Virginia makes the story come to life. By the facial expressions you see what the character is thinking, feeling or reacting. This is how the story is told to the player, but it is up to the player to come to his/her own conclusion of the story.
Family Friendly
Virginia is one of those heavy, story-driven games, and it’s a great game because of it, but there were some concerns that did come up during our play test. First of all, the game’s story is not meant for the whole family. There is some subject matter that may not be fully appropriate for the entire family (no spoilers here). Secondly, the game does not have any spoken dialog for people to follow; in our play test this made it difficult for some gamers in our gaming family to follow the story. Does that mean that Virginia is a bad game? No, it’s a great game, but not one meant for the whole family. We would say it’s meant for older teens and adult gamers that love a story-driven game. We can say that the game’s ending will you have you playing the game again to see what you may have missed, and how the ending differs from the first time around. However, it is also a very niche type of game. If you are planning to pick it up for your digital library, we would recommend parental supervision while having younger gamers play the game. In our special needs gaming test, we did not see any issues that would prevent anyone with special needs from playing Virginia. The only concern that we saw was following the story (for those not accustomed to all-visual cues), however we did notice that special needs gaming members with Autism really did enjoy the game a lot. Again, in our play-through we really enjoyed the game, its story and unique way of storytelling. This is a game for those who love a good story not to miss.
Closing
Virginia is a great game with a unique way of telling a wonderful story, but with some controversial subject matter, the game is not for all members of the family.
