The controls and gameplay were also lauded, while negative critiques more often centered on the map system and limited variety of objectives.

Aquaria is a 2D side-scrolling action-adventure game, heavily focused on exploration and puzzle-solving, with non-linear gameplay.

Hostile plants and animals can hurt Naija, reducing her health meter, by touching her or firing projectiles at her.

[5] Singing notes affects plants and objects of the same color as the note, while singing the tunes, once learned through the plot, can lift objects, create a shield around Naija, or change Naija into different "forms" which have different appearances and unique abilities critical to overcoming the various challenges and obstacles found in the game.

[4] The specific tones that are played when the player selects a note can subtly change in different regions, matching the background music.

The most common effects are healing and enhancing various characteristics such as speed and defense, but there are some more exotic dishes which grant her new abilities.

[5] As the game opens, Naija has lost almost all of her memories, and is unaware of the world outside of her home as she "lives as a simple creature".

[4] The narrative for the majority of the game is centered on Naija's exploration of a series of ruined civilizations that she finds, each with a large monster in them.

Along with Li, a human diver from the land she meets at the top of the ocean, Naija then descends to the bottom of the sea to confront the god.

There she discovers that the Creator fell into the ocean as a child, and bonded with an ancient spirit to gain god-like powers.

If the player has found all of Naija's memories by discovering places she remembers, they reveal that the shadowy figure at the beginning of the game was her mother, Mia.

In the extended epilogue shown if the player has found all of the memories, Mia appears, telling Naija that the two of them can conquer the civilisations above the water.

[2] Some additional work on the game, including some level design and scripting for some enemies, was done by Brandon McCartin.

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.

[23] 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.

[6] She also sang a nine-minute vocal piece, "Fear the Dark", for the release of the Aquaria soundtrack album, which was published by Bit Blot on November 14, 2009.

The festival praised the game's "fluid controls, unique, non-linear gameplay, and vibrant hand-drawn storybook-style graphics".

[40] A review by Scott Colbourne from The Globe and Mail termed Aquaria "drop-dead beautiful" with a "deep and affecting story" and summarized it as "a game you can get comfortably lost in".

[42] Several reviewers, such as Bramwell and Holt, criticized the map system present in the initial version of the game as being confusing and difficult.

[3] Shea and Pearson felt that the game could have used more puzzles or a wider variety of quests and objectives to balance out the exploration and combat.