Sword of the sea It’s a game about letting go. Its main mechanical is to navigate through large desert dunes on a fine leaf, cutting down with bright sands and climbing old towers in search of discovering the secrets of past civilizations. You play better when you forget the controls completely and you just give up -you are in the physics of the photo and let your little character flow. With enough exploration, you will naturally discover bright orbes and bright gold jewelry, and the sands will be transformed into deep, deep seas with fish swimming through the air, cutting wet paths by dirt. Your character, dressed in fluid tunics and a gold mask, mounts the orange hills and blue waves with the same easy athletics, instantly reacting to all the driver’s inputs.
Load a jump and then complete sick tricks with a few fast contributions, or trigger a bubble of sound energy to break nearby vases, discovering pieces of coin in the shattered pieces. The protagonist moves in any direction he pushes, stopping immediately when you let go of the analog pole. There are giant chains to crush, a skill in some areas and a half pipes that are generously positioned around the environments. The control directions appear when you first present a skill, but the text fades quickly and you are left alone in the desert. There is no waypoints at Sword of the seaBut the environment tells a clear story, inviting -to solve puzzles in the mysterious temples that step on the landscape. Find bright Orbes on the roofs and secret passages to unlock the secrets of buildings, opening new areas.
I played about 20 minutes of Sword of the sea At Summer Game Fest, but he wanted to navigate his dunes for a long time. It is the type of game that causes the real world to fade away, no matter how chaotic or intrusive of your immediate environment. It is based on rhythm and vibration, and promotes a state of meditative flow from its first frames. Learn the controls and then forget them; Play with pure intuition and will probably be the right movement.
“The game is trying to navigate, and it is really about the learning process of sailing and feeling -comfortable with surfing, and then trying things that are a little beyond your skills, failing, and then finding out -actually doing them,” said Sword of the Sea Creator Matt Nava on the floor of the SGF program. “And in the process, you realize that surfing is taking advantage of the power of something greater than yourself. You are not paddling, the waves bring you. The zoom camera, the little character; in many games, they are right in the character, because the character is the focus. But in this game it is how the character is a part of the environment, it is the focus.
Nava is the creative director and co -founder of Giant Squid, the rear study Abzû and The pathless. Even with these two successful games under the belt, Nava is even better known as art director of JourneyThe multiplayer’s multiplayer experience that reached PlayStation 3 in 2012. Nava has spent the last decade trying to build explicitly notJourney-Freate games with giant squid and while Abzû and The pathless They both have their distinctive visual stamp, they are the opposite of Journey In many ways. Where Journey settled in a dry and deserted landscape, nava monitoring, Abzûtook place in a underwater world. After that, The pathless It was mostly green, instead of orange with dust.
With Sword of the seaNava let go. Dropped all the preconceptions of what he should do and said mentally fuck –ho. Finally he allowed himself to manifest the game that came naturally.
“In this game, he is very achieved, accepting and proclaiming that I am,” Nava said. “I did it Journey. I do orange again. And I will return to the desert because I have more ideas that we could not do in this game … It is as if I lived in my own shadow for a long time in a strange way. It’s like, why do I do it? I just have to be who I am and continue to explore the art that is my art. “
Sword of the sea It is a specific and special game and although it is located in an orange desert Journey. The game also includes music of Austin WintoryThe Grammy nominated composer behind Journey, Abzû and The pathless. Together, Nava and Wintory form a formidable foundation.
“Many video game scores, only make a music track for the area,” Nava said. “If you are in the city, listen to the city music and then repeat. But it’s not how it works here. Music progresses as your story progresses you They are in your surf adventure, what are you learning how, how far your character has happened in this arc of characters. And this is where the music of a video game What should be ours. “
While Nava and I chatted, someone sat down to play Sword of the sea On a nearby screen, and when I looked up, I saw that they slipped into an area that I did not find in my route. A giant animal skeleton was half buried in the sand, bright white vertebrae dotted with gold jewelry to pick up the player. There are many secrets in Sword of the seaNava assured me. The best way to find them is to leave and play.
Sword of the sea must hit PlayStation 5, Vapor and the Epic game store On August 19.
