Water levels tend to be the most difficult to create due to physics, as well as the most despised due how often they’re mishandled; therefore, making a game that’s nothing but a giant water world takes some massive cojones.
ABZÛ, developed by Giant Squid, published by 505 Games, and released to Steam on August 2nd, 2016, took that challenge head-on. And it may be one of the best water-themed games out there. The game was directed by Matt Nava and its soundtrack was composed by Austin Wintory, two names you might be familiar with if you’ve played the game Journey, released in 2012, a similar experience of exploration of a large world with the unraveling of a silent narrative.
My reason says "You're gonna get lost." My heart says "This is too pretty, I must explore further." |
The beautiful environments struck me to my core-al. |
The game is very resource-extensive, however, so be sure your computer can run it – I personally could, but the game struggled to keep a reasonable rate of frames per second. I also played it with a keyboard, although the Steam page strongly recommends a controller; and indeed, it was somewhat tricky to control the character with the WASD keys and the mouse’s buttons. I had to remember to hold the right-click button to swim forward, while redirecting the character with the keyboard. The camera was extremely finicky, there was no way in the options to manipulate its reaction speed; as a result, merely trying to redirect it with Q or E made it swing wildly around, it was difficult to get the best angle to see what came next.
Lastly, I also met a few glitches. At one point, the camera stopped following the character, forcing me to reload. I wasn't sure whether it was an artistic choice or a genuine glitch. Also, the game crashed badly just before the very last chapter, but my progress wasn’t lost. So, it did have a few annoyances, but nothing that turned me off from it.
In spite of these issues, did I enjoy my experience? Yes. It’s a good game, though I guess I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more with the right specs and a controller. I don’t regret playing it at all, it’s a gorgeous experience. It’s less about action and more about exploration and taking in the sights and the story, but games like these are very welcome. I have also heard a lot of good about Journey, the previous game by Jenova Chen that also had Matt Nava as an artist. I should check it out someday. In the meantime, I recommend ABZÛ; just make sure you can run it first. Abzû is usually available on Steam for 20$.
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