Abzu has brought to the players the unexplored and unknown spaces of the underwater world. With No Man’s Sky releasing this very month, Abzu is surely going to give the game a tough competition with its focus on the ocean.
Like the outer space that has always fascinated man-kind with its unexplored side, the same goes for the underwater world. There are depths in the ocean floor that have never been explored, and this gives a lot of scope to the game.
No Man’s Sky is focusing on 18 quintillion planets in the gameplay, which will make it impossible for any player ever to finish playing the game in their lifetime. Abzu taps into this feature of the unknown and brings to the players a game that mythologizes the sea. The name of the game has been derived from the Sumerian mythologies. “Ab” means “ocean” and “Zu” means “deep.”
Abzu has been directed by Matt Nava, and the gameplay follows the Diver. The playable character is dropped into the ocean, and there isn’t any explanation offered for the same. The player starts exploring the ocean around. The first thing that the players notice while playing Abzu is that there is no fear of running out of air. In Abzu, the experience of the player in the game world is as important as the action in it.
The game doesn’t involve any combat. It is more about exploring and not about winning. The player is made to enter the world that goes on with or without their presence, and they see how the different things in their proximity react to their presence.
The player can simply swim around the ocean floor and follow different shoals of fish. The player realizes that the gameplay starts unfolding as they go deeper and deeper into the ocean. The first glimmer of action starts when the Diver meets a great white shark. The player discovers traces of alien technology all over the ocean bed. The gameplay emerges so naturally that the player never feels that the story has been building up.
As reported by The Independent, the best thing about the game is that the most important part of Abzu is NOT that the players will have to amass power and weapons to head to the next level.
The game immerses itself in the little joys of ocean life. The players during playing Abzu realizes that they can ride the larger fish and move, or that they can go through a forest of reeds to enter a cave teeming with ocean life.
The ocean can tend to be a quiet place, and to prevent the players from feeling lonely the developers have incorporated drones who act as the player’s sidekick. They can stop the player from being lonely by dancing with them as they twist and twirl through the water.
It should be mentioned that the great white shark that the player encounters will not like the drone sidekick of the Driver.
The players who have tried their hands on Abzu have said that the best part of the game is to be in the eye of the bait ball and watch the large fish trying to prey on the smaller fish. The sections of the ocean with the strong currents are also fun. The players can enjoy a huge population of different fish swimming along together and trying to escape the large fish.