A while back Sony made a partnership deal with a small indie team known simply as, and this is their real name folks, Thatvideogamecompany. They probably could have chosen a more creative name, but what the bloody hell right? They created artistic titles that really didn’t aim to excite the player, but help them feel relaxed in what were peaceful and beautiful settings. A majority of modern Triple A games seem to do nothing more than immerse their players in griddy and violent action packed set pieces, so why not make a game that was about just simply looking at a beautiful world? Their first two artistic games were named Flow and Flower, both receiving good reception. Their third game would be the title that elevated them as a stand out indie studio. That game was known as Journey, a third person adventure game that followed a small character covered in cloth trying to make it up a mountain. It was a simple game with a colorful artstyle, breathtaking moments, and music that helped each section of the game strike the heartstrings of the player. It was a really good artistic indie game and it was nominated for a ton of awards when it originally came out.
Journey would be the last game Sony would publish for the small indie team as their partnership deal had finally ended. Afterwards, the team struggled to figure out what to do. They wanted to continue making art for hundreds of people to experience and enjoy, which is the thought that every artist should have. A good chunk of the Thatvideogamecompany staff ended up leaving and forming a new indie game studio, Giant Squid. Such staff members included Matt Nava who was the main artist for Journey and would go on to help direct the team’s next biggest game. Journey took place in a dry aran desert with stretches of sand as far as the eye can see, so Nava wanted to create a game that looked more vibrant and populated unlike the empty fields of Journey. Although his game would be more compact, what he wanted in the end was an all time feel good game. At E3 2014 the team announced their new project Abzu and it wasn’t until two years later that some actual footage of the game would be shown off. It was an aquatic adventure that took no words to explain. It was simple, straightforward, and could be played within a single game sension.
Abzu was scheduled to come out later in 2016 and when the game finally came out it received pretty good reception. A lot of people liked how fleshed out the world was, how the game innovated on underwater navigation, and those moments where the player gets to witness the beauty of underwater life. Abzu was brilliant, it wasn’t perfect or as successful as Journey, but it was truly one of the many brilliant gems that came out that year. I have been meaning to play this game for a while. I love the idea of underwater exploration and there’s not many games out there besides this and Subnautica that show how beautiful underwater life can be.
Luckily I was able to download Abzu for free when Playstation had their Play At Home event a month or so ago. When they allowed Playstation 4 owners to download a small selection of indie games for free as well as the entirety of Horizon Zero Dawn and it’s downloadable content, god I love that game, for free to encourage people to stay healthy during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was my chance to finally own Abzu and see why people love this game so damn much. After finishing the game within two hours I can confirm that everything Abzu has been praised for is true. This is a wonderful experience that no gamer should miss out on. Sure it may be a really short game, but the amount of enjoyment Abzu has to offer makes it all worth it. Today we’ll be taking a brief look into why you should look into Abzu and why it deserves your attention. So let’s dive into the depths of the ocean and see what mysteries lie within.
Story
There’s only so much I can tell you guys about the story since Abzu is only about two hours worth of runtime, so let’s make this as vague but brief as possible. You play as an unnamed diver who wakes to find themself in a vast and bright ocean. They immediately dive into the deep waters and discover colorful marine life. Huge families of fish swimming about, spiraling plant life, and structures unique to this underwater landscape. When exploring the region further, the diver finds hidden templems and caverns showing an ancient race that came before them. They are the exact same color as they are and it seems like the ancient ones were trying to do something. The diver swims through the colorful biomes until they discover an area that is dark lit and possesses no life at all. A blue portal glows at the bottom of the area and when they go through it they are transported to a spiritual plain containing blue energy. They swim towards a structure glowing within the plane and marine life begins to appear in the once dark lit and isolated biome. The diver swims even further and weird machine structures separating areas of the ocean world they are in. Ultimately the diver’s goal is to locate these blue portals, return life back to the ocean, analyze the ancient temples hidden below the surface, and discover why he is the only non-fish being to be here.
The story isn’t anything spectacular and most players are going to ignore it, but personally I really like the story of Abzu and how it is told. It’s told in a sense similar to Hyper Light Drifter where the game doesn’t even speak a single word of dialogue and instead uses visuals and environmental storytelling to let the player discover information on their own. The history of the world is deep, pun intended, the more the player invests themselves into the world and they begin to grow attached to marine life as the fishes around you treat you like one of them. All you need sometimes is a simple premise and let the experience do the rest. The thing about these artsy indie games is that you just have to take in how beautiful they are rather than what the overall core experience is. Art does deserve to be criticized and judged, but a majority of the time we just need to appreciate hard work. Especially with how long games take to develop.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Abzu isn’t the most intense and action packed gameplay you’ll see in a video game. Actually there isn’t any combat at all and there’s nothing really out in the world to kill or attack the player. The player navigates their way through small open ended areas, locates an object they can interact with, open up the pathway to where they need to go next, and keep on swimming. Sometimes you’ll need to find a cute little drone that will melt away a moss covered door blocking the path to the next area. Other times you’ll need to locate an interactable contraption like a winch holding down some chains to open up a door. The game does it’s best to point the player towards the right direction and never let them get confused, which I can respect the designers for. They wanted Abzu to be a streamline and accessible experience as possible.
The main diver swims around the environment really fluidly and the controls to make him move around are perfect for an underwater exploration game. You can rise towards the surface, dive towards the ground, do a flip both underwater and in the air, and with well timed button presses you can perform a powerful stroke to propel yourself forward quickly. The real beauty of Abzu is looking at what is around you. This is an artsy indie game afterall and the developers spent all this time crafting a world for the player to appreciate. It’s like going to a museum and seeing a painting come to life. Watching an ink made town of Rome bustling with life and seeing all the classy activities the residents perform. It’s something like that in Abzu, but even better. You can interact with fishes around you and even ride on their backs. You get to control them for a bit and see they swim around. There are tons of fish in Abzu and the people who made this game definitely did their research to see the numerous types of marine life out there in the world. There are even statues for the player to meditate on to telepathically see all the fish swimming around. They get to know their names, whether they swim in groups or alone, and how they feed on each other.
Everything that needs to make a linear underwater adventure great is here. There’s those scripted cinematic moments where the player gets to witness some brilliant events. You're moving through a jetstream at a breakneck speed and all the other lifeforms are swimming besides you. You can touch certain families of fish, they'll glow once you interact with them, and swim along with you for a short period of time. I got a weird sense of satisfaction when this happened and made sure to touch all the fish while swimming down these fast linear jetstreams. There is this one point in the game where you are swimming next to a huge group of whales and the spectacle is just beautiful. Abzu is just really good and there aren’t that many times where the game takes away control from the player. It’s engaging enough to keep the player moving through the environments. Hopefully you can bring life back to this ocean world.
Thoughts
Abzu is the second best underwater experience I’ve had with gaming and it certainly is a good example of how to make a game centered around underwater navigation. The core gameplay loop is solid and doesn’t feel overwhelming over the course of the game. The many environments the player navigates through are beautiful and just when you get used to one area you are dumped into another one with sites to behold. The first area is a kelp forest and I was expecting the next area to be the same, but then it changed into a field full of orange glistening coral. There’s this one endgame area where you walk on dry land for a bit, and instead of spoiling it I want you to experience it yourself because of how wondrous that moment is once you get to it. The graphics are great, the lighting helps Abzu’s world stand out, and there's a unqiue style as a majority of the models are structured out of polygons rather than look realistic.
I like how easily the character moves around the environment and it might just be the gold standard for me and underwater exploration. I would even say the movement in Abzu is better than the movement in Subnautica, but we’ll touch on how it controls in a minute. The story I found to be intriguing with how it was told and set up. There’s this twist later on that reveals more about the main diver and why they're there in the world which is handled really neatly. The music and soundtrack is some of the best I have heard from a video game. I’m not kidding when I say the music in Abzu is god damn majestic and brilliant. Easily in my list of top ten video game soundtracks. It helps add beauty to the world of Abzu. The game isn’t that long and only takes up one and half to two hours to beat, but that’s a really good time for a game like Abzu. I feel like if it went up to more than three hours I would have really gotten tired. Especially since the primary gameplay loop is just locating interactable objects and moving onward.
Abzu is good, it’s great even and I do want to say it’s a game I highly recommend. It’s not for everybody and some gamers don’t really like artsy indie games for how short they are, how much they lack core gameplay, and how some of them have moral messages but do a mixed job at getting them across to the player. Abzu had a message about the environment and why it matters to take care of it, but I feel like there is more to it than just that and some players are going to utterly ignore whatever Abzu is trying to say which is a little disrespectful to be honest with.
Abzu is brilliant, but it does have a few problems. The controls were an aspect I wanted to touch upon earlier, because on consoles Abzu takes some time to get used to. Moving left and right is great, but the camera adjusts with the player’s movement and there aren’t any options to turn it off and let the right joystick be dedicated to the camera. Rising and diving through the water along with adjusting the camera up and down is awkward, because the controls are inverted compared to a majority of games with cameras and that is a lot of games. Instead hold up makes your character move down, holding down makes them move up, and the same applies to camera adjusting. Finding the in-game options to change it is a little hard and if I remember correctly from my two hour playthrough there weren’t any. Finally due to the linear structure of the game there isn’t really any reason to replay Abzu. You can try to collect all the achievements/trophies for the game or locate some shiny seashells hidden around, but other than that you are not really going to get anything special.
Other than that Abzu is a f*cking great work of art. Giant Squid have proven themselves worthy with their first published title and another game that I’m looking into right now turns out to be their most recent release. The Pathless which I am really excited to play one day with just how lovely the world looks and for how the game is more focused on characters and story. You play as a skilled huntress who dashes around like a ninja and has an eagle for a pet, which sounds like everything I want in my life. Enough stalling, in the end I am going to give Abzu a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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