We were the first that ever burst; Into that silent sea.

I don't know that I've ever been quite so excited about an upcoming game as I am about Aquaria. It's not yet released, but I've been following the boards at bit-blot.com closely ever since Alec and Derek decided to enter it in to the Independent Games Festival. They won the grand prize and it's easy to see why.

Aquaria is beautiful. From the rich 2-D landscapes to the wonderful voice-acting, what I've heard and seen from the trailers just leaves me with spindles all over my skin. Every trailer that I've seen makes the animation and control look ultra-fluid, much like the ocean in which the main character is living.

The story appears to center around Naija, a young mer-girl who awakes without her memory in the vast ocean world of Aquaria. Watch the trailer on the website to see more. Your guess is as good as mine on how the story will unfold, but I can assure you one thing; with the amount of care that Derek and Alec have put into this game, it's going to be spectacular.

One of the things that excites me the most is that the inspiration for this game comes from three of my all-time favorite games -- Metroid, Zelda, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. If you're in to pigeonholing games, I suppose that Aquaria falls under the category of "action adventure". From reading the blog and message boards on Bit-Blot, it sounds like there's a lot of exploration involved also. With the fluidity of the control scheme and the rich, hand-drawn graphics, I have a feeling that the exploration of Aquaria alone is going to be more fun than half of the games out on the market now.

Check out the link to Aquaria and marvel at it for a while. Hopefully you'll become as hopelessly addicted to a game you've never even played yet as I have. I'm just here to share the love.

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Why play it? Well, you can't. Not yet at least. When they release Aquaria, it'll be plain to see why.