The first statue, and presumably every statue afterwards, is placed in a well-lit area with plenty variety of fish to keep track of. X allows you to ping and interact, but the pinging doesn’t really come into play until you meet your drone who simply chirps the same number of beeps in response.įinding statues allows you to “meditate” which effectively lets you track the camera on any nearby fish. The swimming felt a little finnicky at first but after setting the controls from Inverted to Normal it was much easier to settle into.
There is a latch on mechanic where you can travel holding onto larger fish but that appears to be for more of a scenic ride than any faster movement. The swimming feels very nice and fluid (ayyy), and you move appropriately slow for the first area at least. Hopefully more of these moments are peppered appropriately throughout the game. Their design is similar to that of the diver, so there will mostly be an attachment drawn later in the game.Īs my interest was kind of starting to flag around the 12 minute point, the game did manage to pick up by bringing back an established creature to eat up the drone and showing more of the ancient technology in the background. Beyond that, there are glimpses of a previous civilization etched into hieroglyphs on stone walls found throughout the first area. As the diver you pass through a bright portal that takes you to this vast, violet black environment with bright beams of energy and light that are emitted from a nearby pedestal. Second is the establishment of an otherworldly/ethereal plane. A few minutes into the game you run into what looks like a small drone that jets around, beeping and lighting up. The diver’s kit has a sleek, modern feel to it reinforced both by the flashlights that turn on in dark environments and a pinging feature that activates when you try to go off the beaten path. There isn’t much more setup to that but there are small hints as to the world the game takes place in.įirst is the establishment of technology. In this case, instead of an elegant Jawa in the desert, you are a faceless diver in the middle of the ocean. Because I won’t be able to stop making comparisons to Journey, similar to Journey you start the game as a lone, isolated figure out in the middle of a vast wilderness. The opening shot of the game takes you through the ocean, diving from surface into the depths, past schools of fish darting by, until you end on a bright ball of reddish light. However, the comparisons to Journey don’t stop there as Abzu tries to go for the same visual storytelling that Journey does.
I was a little more intrigued in it after finding out that the art director was the art director for Journey as well, and that certainly shows. Abzu was one I got back in a Humble Bundle but never got around to playing. In an effort to trim down my backlog, I’m going to make more of an effort to get through as many games and give them their 15 minutes of playtime.