“First of all, it’s just super fun in a video game to move,” Matt Nava tells me, with the certainty of someone stating the absolute obvious. And he’s dead right.
Sword of the Sea reviewDeveloper: Giant SquidPublisher: Giant SquidPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out 18th August on PC (Steam, Epic) and PS5
“Entire categories of games are about movement – racing games, snowboarding games – but they’re often very much, in terms of gameplay, a race. Or a point contest. There’s not a lot of exploration games.” Enter, Sword of the Sea, developer Giant Squid’s latest after the exquisitely meditative Pathless and Abzû: “What about a game where you have all that fun movement, in the context of an exploration game?”
I first spoke to Nava, creative director at Giant Squid, back at Summer Game Fest in June, but my time with the game – and talking about it with Nava – is more than easy to recall. Amongst the upbeat but forever hurried show floor of video games mass-press event, Sword of the Sea was a plunge into gentle, familiar tranquility.
From around half an hour with it I can tell you with certainty: this is a game of near peerless flow – though it’s flow of a very specific kind. Normally flow-state games come as a result of pressure, the kind of mesmeric focus that’s forged like a diamond. Sword of the Sea’s is like the flow of water itself. And the news that it’s coming to PS Plus at launch next week is the perfect excuse to finally sit down and evangelise for it, because if you’ve got a subscription to that, let me tell you: you are in for an absolute treat.
Exit your hibernation chamber of a cave, claiming your mystically imbued sword of some kind of wordless destiny – there’s a lot of Zelda here, you’ll quickly notice, pot-smashing included – and you’re away. Your sword is a surfboard, skateboard, snowboard, whatever. The dunes are your waves. Go see what they offer up.