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Abzu

The Team at Giant Squid Studios took on an unenviable task with Abzu, making an underwater game that wasn’t infuriating as hell and while the game features amazing watery vistas the controls meant that much of the time spent was working out how to look around and take full advantage of the world that was in front of me.

The swimming simulator isn’t showing you a heart-breaking narrative or a personal journey of growth, it is first and foremost about the sea and I found myself really enjoying the relaxing nature of not having a human voice interrupting my experience of the game and just letting me be in it. Each chapter is pretty similar with the player swimming through and finding objectives that are necessary to move on and while each section you are in feels open and broad it is clearly a mark of clever design that I didn’t once feel lost in the environment. It was always clear where I had to go and not yet been. The underwater plant and sealife also allow this world to feel alive and the colour that these creatures brought to the world was a feast for the eyes. I think most obvious to me though was the sound-design. While a silent sound-scape was certainly an option the rush of a school of fish, or the chime of a slip stream was so well done that I think it might be my favourite aspect of this game. All of these features make Abzu one of the most relaxing experiences I’ve played this year, which it needed to be because the controls almost made me give up.

Abzu’s controls aren’t terrible, it would be hyperbolic to say that they were but they prove such stark opposition to the general vibe of the game that their crimes are worse then just being annoying. Most of the time this presents itself in a fiddly camera and a few movement issues and I am aware of how pity this complaint feels but when I’ve chilled out to the meditation statues and watched schools of fish flutter around the sea weed the last thing I want to do is get annoyed that my movements seem to be unreactive. Abzu’s control issue is most prevalent when it asks you to get out of the water (almost like when a skating game asks you to get off the board). It takes numerous tries to get the character to where you want them to be and then the slow walk to the objective feels as though it is necessary because swimming to it would have been too much of an issue to ensure it works effectively.

There is no doubt that Abzu is a great visual experience and the exploration of the ocean is something that I didn’t know could be so dramatic and magical. The almost 2 hours I spent with it were sectioned up into a couple of sessions after I played some more intense games and the palate cleansing effect was very real. Could it have been more refined? Sure, but did it need to be? Absolutely not. Abzu wont be a game that I remember for its clunky camera, but the joy of exploring deep caverns and pools.