Abzu is a very unique game. It combines a relaxing gameplay, with lovely soundtracks and astonishing art style. Similar to other indie titles released during that era such as Little Nightmares,
Cuphead and ofcourse the Journey from which Abzu was heavily inspired, uses little to non dialogue in order to tell their story. In other words it's another one of these Wordless Games.
During the game, the player get's to control of a nameless diver who seems to be floating ontop of the ocean's surface. The Players don't get to know what happened to him and how he ended up up there.
Instead the gameplay begins, by allowing the player to swim through the ocean freely. It has no limitation as to where the diver can go. The ocean is filled with various of sea creatures. The fish swim
around freely. Sometimes they ll get scared of the diver while some other times they will join the diver. Fish are not the only thing under the sea, and thats something the developers had in mind.
Since we do not know half of the things that can be found in the ocean, the developers had a fun time designing areas. The leves are very different with each other, some of them have caves, others
have ship wrecks, mine fields, ancient ruins and ofcourse every location have different flora. The environment interacts with the diver in a very natural way. The sea weed in the ocean follows the flow
of the water's current, the sand floats when the diver is near it and most of the fish swim in swarms. The mines in the mine fields go left and right following the water and explode is something touches them.
There's plenty of stuff that the diver can interact with. First things first, in almost all of the levels there are these small innactive robots hidden with in the sand. The diver has the ability to awaken them
by approaching and interacting with them. The robots by them selves do not do anything other than swim arround, however, there are interactable areas that require the diver to have robots in order to procceed.
For example, in a location in order for the diver to enter a temple, he is required to break the chains. These chains won't interact with the diver unless he has one or two robots accompany him.
Although the game has no dialogue, the players and the devoted fan base of Abzu, spent plenty of hours diving in the ocean in order to find any piece of Lore that they can get. Lore elements can be found mainly
through the temples. The temples have art on the walls alongside some ancient text, that 'try' to describe where humanity went and what happened to this universe.
In the game there are these Shark statues where the character can sit on top in order to meditate. While in a meditation state, the player can change the camera and spectate all the fish within the given area.
If the player does so, while spectating acertain fish or even a certain type of plant , the name of it will be displayed in the bottom corner of the screen. It is worth mentioning that they re very educational
and interesting.It is highly recommended, sitting and exploring the underwater life.
The Gameplay of Abzu is very simple, and it can be enjoyed by anyone, despite their gaming experience. It is also worth mentioning how for an 'underwater game', the game handles it self well. The diver
swims around by holdin down the R2 button. The player can swim close to any fish and hold down L2, by doing so the diver will grab onto the fish and let it take him further. Some fish follow their own path
while others allowed the player to manuver them. Letting go of the fish will give a slight boost to the divers speed. Circle, is a button used for spinning around. The spin doesn't offer much on it's own
but doing it close to a swarm of fish or while grabbing on a fish will make them spin as well. When a swarm spins with the diver, once again will reward the diver with speed momentum. Square is the button
used in order to interact with the environment. Interactions with the robots, chains, temples , shark statues, everything is with the use of square. X is the button used for boosting. Tapping X with a rythm
allows for the diver to constantly boosting, however the limit of the boost can be seen through the diver's fins, The longer they are the better.
The last thing to mention is that there are sea creatures, that have been captured. The diver can release them by approaching their trap,( which will be shiny in most of the cases) and interact with them.
This act will release the creatures and the diver will have new types of fish to swim along. Some are dolphins, tortoises, orcas and others. The last type of abilitythatthe diver can do is jump on top of the water.
When the diver boosts on top of the sea he will make a jump similar to the dolphins, and when accompanied with other fish they will also jump making for some amazing screenshots. All the divers needs to do is accelerate
before reaching the top.
The game is unique to each genre. The player can spent as much time as they wish in order to discover the amazing under water world developed by Giant Squid. The graphics as mention are fascinating
and the feeling of realism is kinda scary. Everything seems to be alive in a natural way. The fish seems to be both afraid and friendly towards the diver but extremely scared of certain bloodthirsty creatures.
Despite of all the fish,flora and scenery, the game always keeps its frame rate in check and it does not drop when there's plenty of things at the same time on screen. The game combines the beutiful scenery
with amazing relaxing soundtracks and always escorted with the water and fish sound effects. Whether it's the sound made by the whales or the plants interacting with each other the sounds plays a crutial part for
the game. In temrs of it's length the game is not long, in fact it shouldnt take more than 4 hours to swim from the first part of the ocean to the last.Nevertheless, the pacing of each player differs, some might
take their time swimming around with the fish while others will go straigh ahead for the end game.
This is a video showcasing and reviewing the Game