CHENNAI: It is hot again. Instead of reaching out for a water bottle that’s a room away, I download games with a water aesthetic (free on PSN this month!). I started with Subnautica. Subnautica is a beautiful underwater exploration game and all, but the universe is isolating and appears unfriendly. An hour into the game, I was completely lost, sweating, and constantly resurfacing to a vast expanse of nothingness. That just felt wrong. I should not be sweating when my character was underwater. So, I turned to Abzû.
Abzû uses visual storytelling to tell you a story...alright, there isn’t really a story here. You are nudged to interpret some amazing art. The music, colours, and lighting all help. Ergo, at the end of the two-hour long game, you leave with a feeling of having learnt something ‘deep’. It could be the literal deep like the names of fish that you found near the ocean floor. It is more likely that you learnt the figurative ‘deep’. You might suddenly catch yourself being hopeful, saying things like: “wow, there is really a lot more to life”, and “maybe I should invest in ocean floor real-estate”.
In Abzû, you are a diver, cutting through the ocean. In this breathing children’s encyclopedia, you encounter sea creatures. There are big fish, small fish, some aesthetic flora. There are also turtles, sharks, whales, and prehistoric creatures. While the world looks massive and confusing, the game helps you by enforcing linearity. Paraphrasing the words of Rubeus Hagrid, “If anyone wanted to find out some stuff, all they’d have to do would be to follow the fish”.
With the diver, you travel to different parts of the ocean to break the corruption that has caught hold of these parts. There’s no conflict, and no established progression in terms of story or combat. The game gives us no incentive to rush through each of the different locations, and every reason to patiently explore.
Abzû can be compared to the now classic “Journey”, and the more recent “Pathless”, both of which borrow elements from common creators. A full 7/7 seas for this game which enriches the niche genre of exploration-based gameplay.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quaffle_waffle
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)