"Abzu" is a spiritual successor to the popular "walking simulator" video game "Journey" from 2012. Much like "Journey" "Abzu" can be considered much more like an experience, than a true game, given that there is very little active narrative and not much in the way of goals to achieve. It's a guided exploration of a strange undersea world, and for one playthrough at least, was just about worth the effort.
A female diver explores the seas and oceans of an unnamed world interacting with the undersea creatures that inhabit it. As the player explores, a great white shark acts like a spiritual guide, teasing her in the right direction to discover large pyramid structures. Deactivating these structures releases lost creatures into the wild and restores the balance of the ecosystems.
There is a stylised look to the creatures and worlds of Abzu. It is more interested in authenticity of movement than realism of the actual animals. So how your diver moves through seaweed or how her presence disrupts a school of fish is more important for selling the idea, than photorealistic worlds. I've never been scuba diving, so can't speak to the reality of how the character moves, but it was easy to navigate around the world and there were enough visual clues or markers to allow me to work out where I needed to go next on each level.
For one play though, I think Abzu does really well - it's a short game, completable in a couple of hours with me not stopping to explore every nook and cranny, but also not blasting through the whole thing like a speedrunner. I don't feel that it's interesting enough though that I'd consider going back to play through it again, there are achievements available for those that might wish to swim with each animal, but I felt sated by just seeing everything that once.
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