Abzû review: A digital sightseeing tour of an underwater realm

It takes a while to adjust to life down here, in the murk and swill of Abzû‘s underwater palaces. The world feels fundamentally different when your movements are slowed and made heavy by water resistance. And then, as a kind of compensation perhaps, you are given the freedom of flight: upwards and downwards you soar in slow-mo, through the teeming fish. You play as an adept diver, with strong legs, fat flippers, and a head-mounted torch but, even so, it’s hard to shake the sense that you are an interloper in a foreign realm. Your get-up cannot disguise the fact that your body was not made for a place like this. You are not welcome here.

It takes time to adjust to Abzû in other ways too. This is a fashionably chic independent game, with no ugly and intrusive HUD elements to spoil your view of its watery domain. But it bucks many other expected contemporary game-design conventions too. There’s no map, for example, and no blinking mission-marker drawing you toward your next objective. There are, in fact, few objectives at all, at least in the usual video game sense. There’s no health bar, no experience points, nor ways to level up your character’s abilities. A single button is used to interact with the world, one catch-all interface used to free shoals of fish from meshes of imprisoning fronds, or to send orbiting mechanical devices to cut a window through the coral, or to loose a shark from some collapsed masonry.

While, much later, there are dangers in the form of unexploded mines which will go off if you drift too close, it’s not possible to die in Abzû. At worst you get an electric shock that sends you tumbling through the water for a few seconds until you recover and rediscover your bearings. No, this is a wistful, thoughtful kind of a game: a digital sightseeing tour of an underwater realm, which allows you to marvel at the watery vistas and swim eye-to-eye with great whales. Like Flower and Journey, two contemplative PlayStation games on which Abzû’s creator Matt Nava has previously worked, this is a game about experience rather than challenge, about the journey rather than the destination.

At times Abzû has the ambiance of a magical Disneyland ride, an on-rails tour through vivid scenes where, each time through, you’re free to pick out new details and wonders. The feeling of enchantment is compounded by Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory’s stirring soundtrack, which calls to mind Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia, which famously blended animated imagery with classical music. As you drift into and out of jet streams, through billowing curtains of seaweed, and over old bones licked white by the salt, the violins rise and fall to match your movements. As you breach the water alongside a display team of dolphins, a choir provides triumphant accompaniment. Reach the deepest parts of the sea and the soundtrack retreats, leaving nothing but the deep grumble of the tides, and the low popping of swaying bubbles leaked from the seabed. Abzû’s soundtrack, both musical and natural, is exemplary.

The game’s greatest strength is the sense of aesthetic wonder it offers players. The ocean is alive with life, including giant trevally, oceanic whitetip sharks, eagle rays, lionfish, great pulsing jellyfish, and a thousand more species besides. The digital water is more bountiful and diverse than any aquarium, and the chance to swim with all this unseen life feels rare and valuable. It’s not all natural and life down here in the underwater realm, either. There are pristine underwater temples, busy with hieroglyphics (which, for the observant, offer clues to the game’s story). There are rusty chains and creaking gates, and more futuristic props, too: triangular contraptions set into the rock with unblinking red eyes. Its story, like its waters, grows darker the deeper you go.

Abzû‘s E3 gameplay trailer.

There is more to do than merely drift and stare. Abzû is divided into discrete sections, each one bookended by a visit to a mysterious temple. In general, the puzzles take a similar form: follow chains or power lines from a locked door back through the water to wherever they can be spooled or powered up. Then, you may progress to the next scene and the next. Find plinths and you may pause to meditate on the scene, viewing your surroundings from the point of view of the local fish. You might even catch a glimpse of a shark feeding; this world ticks along regardless of your involvement. You are merely a visitor, after all.