Abzu

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“ Each area shows off Abzu’s fantastic art direction and attention to detail.

This journey feels remarkable because of the way it constantly dangles the next intriguing area in front of you. I found myself traveling through its underwater rabbit hole into a strange, unfamiliar world full of cryptic iconography and ambient life such as fish, turtles, and whales. I was constantly wondering what I would find around the next bend, and each new area I discovered kept the surprises coming with fantastic architecture and some incredibly large spaces to swim in. And while nothing (including some intimidatingly large sharks) wants to actually eat you, it’s still a fish-eat-fish world down here, and you can observe the convincingly recreated circle of life by meditating at a shark statue if you want.

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Continuing on my journey I slowly waded into ancient ruins or completely lit-up, cathedral-like structures, and enjoyed the leisurely pace. In certain places it speeds up, and high-speed channels function like highways that pick up the pace and push you into beautiful new territory. One of the more memorable speedways had me swimming alongside a pod of incredibly large whales. It made me feel like a small fish in a very large pool.

Even during the most spectacular moments the framerate was almost always consistent at 30 per second despite the density of life on screen. I noticed it slow down slightly a handful of times, like when ultra dense schools of fish would swim in a tight loop.

“ The rousing orchestral melodies that stayed with me hours after I put down the controller.

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But what are we actually doing here, other than taking in the sights and sounds? Abzu never makes that clear, either from a story perspective or with gameplay depth. I did enjoy my time swimming from the start because simple controls make is easy for almost anyone to pick up and enjoy moving around. Abzu uses a familiar control setup that resembles a driving game: holding the R2 button dives deeper and constantly moves you forward. You can boost to push through through areas quickly. Within minutes I could effortlessly maneuver in the water, do loop-the-loops, or break through to the surface and pull off a quick mid-air trick like a dolphin. And what limited interactions there are with the environment focus on helping you get around: you can grab onto fish when you want to move faster or slower.

“ Abzu's simple puzzle are designed to keep you moving ahead.

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The mystery Abzu presents at the start is intriguing, but the end of story is a little too abstract – even relative to other wordless storytelling adventures like Journey. There are a few cutscenes, but it mostly leans on environmental storytelling to fill in the gaps of what happened to an ancient, alien-looking civilization we find here. But what happened and why were very unclear, and on my first time through there wasn’t enough context to give the ending the power it seemed to aim for. I couldn’t quite place what Abzu wanted me to feel, so it just left me puzzled because I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. But considering the entire thing is just three hours long, it’s short enough that I didn’t mind diving back in for another swim through to piece together the story, which revealed significantly more meaning now that I knew what to look for.