Hilda and The Watercolors

Hilda and The Watercolors is a first-person exploration adventure video game developed by The Farm 51 and published by 505 Games. It was released for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 6, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Cloud Hybrid, Steam Deck devices, Amazon Luna, Windows, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

It is the fourth game in the Hilda series, and it is an additional sequel to Hilda 2. Unlike previous entries of the series, the game makes a drastic turn from its predecessors, giving it a darker tone and and appealing to the evolved audience. The content in the game earned it an M for Mature rating from the ESRB due to Alcohol Reference, Language, Mild Violence, Nudity, Sexual Themes, and Use of Tobacco.

Gameplay
Hilda and The Watercolors is a graphic adventure played from a first-person view. The player controls the protagonist, Hilda, as she is turned into a troll, to explore various locations in the fictional setting of a new location and communicate with non-playable characters through the conversation system based on dialogue trees.

Some sequences will have puzzle solving, if the player fails to solve a puzzle will have to try again. There are plenty of areas that have puzzles to solve, similar to Myst.

Synopsis
The game takes place after Hilda 2. The story tells us how Johanna was becoming a better person and having a good relationship with Hilda again. A few years later, it is Hilda’s 14th birthday. To celebrate, Hilda and her friends start another journey, where suddenly, Hilda turns into a troll. Now she has to deal with a new adventure where she'll meet the water witches and know about the existence of the watercolors, stones of colors that had free control to the water and discover how they were corrupted by the "Aqua Devil". Now she must start a dangerous adventure where she will meet new friends and new locations.

ESRB Mature Rating Decision
The decision of making Hilda and The Watercolors rated Mature is a mixed bag. It was questionable making the game rated M for Mature at first, but in worked out in the end. The nudity is only applied and shown on adults (Yes Hilda is naked when she turns back to normal, but it’s not explicitly shown), Hilda will not die but if the player fails the action they restart from the previous checkpoint, only having adults smoking like Bellkeeper, and other things was carefully applied while also making sure it stays true to the source material.

Price
The game will be costing at 40 dollars on all platforms. The game will be free to download for Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass members, and PlayStation Plus members day-one. The game would also be available on Amazon Luna for 10 dollars a month while also being available for free for Amazon Prime members. Now with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, the game will also cost a full 40 dollars on those devices, similar to how much games like Resident Evil 8: Village, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Death Stranding would cost on Apple devices like the iPhone 15 Pro and the newest iPad Pro.

Steam Deck and Linux Compatibility
The game would also be both playable and verified on Valve's Steam Deck devices depending on which model you have. Every Steam Deck device use SteamOS which is based on Linux. Since the Steam Deck devices use Linux, many games on Windows will work with Linux using both Wine and Proton. Wine and Proton are compatibility layers that translates Windows games and applications to work on Linux, and they work flawlessly. Most of Windows games will work on Linux and on Steam Decks via Proton, so there won't be a version specifically for Linux because… Well… There’s no need for it.

Apple Compatibility
The game on Apple devices uses 33 GB of storage. For installation, the recommendation would be having at least 44 GB of free space.

iPhone:

Requires iOS 19.0 or later and a device with the A17 Pro chip or later.


 * iPhone 15 Pro
 * iPhone 15 Pro Max

iPad:

Requires iPadOS 19.0 or later and a device with the M1 chip or later.


 * iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd generation)
 * iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular
 * iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (5th generation)
 * iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular
 * iPad Air (5th generation)
 * iPad Air (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular
 * iPad Pro (11-inch) (4th generation)
 * iPad Pro (11-inch) (4th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular
 * iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (6th generation)
 * iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular

Mac:

Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.

Trivia

 * 1) This is the first game in the series that has an M for Mature rating from the ESRB and has mature content for the Hilda series itself.
 * 2) This is the first game to be cross-generation.
 * 3) The PC, iOS, iPadOS, ana macOS versions will have controller support.
 * 4) Physical releases will have a free new-gen upgrade available for those who puchased the previous-gen version.
 * 5) Physical releases will include bonus items.