Sword Of The Sea

See that mountain? Looks familiar, doesn’t it? And that distant peak with the pillar of divine light shooting up from its summit isn’t the only thing you'll recognise.

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There are the shimmering, undulating sands. The fragmented ruins. The enigmatic figure charged with navigating this arid environment, and the graceful way they glide through it. The camera, shifting from behind our protagonist to the side, reframing their passage through interiors lined with tall arches to offer dreamy glimpses at a sublime sunset. We'll stop there, since the callbacks could stretch beyond the end of the page. Suffice it to say that if Abzû and The Pathless hinted that former Thatgamecompany art director Matt Nava has been yearning to make a spiritual sequel to Journey, Giant Squid’s latest makes that goal explicit.

If that prospect appeals, you probably needn’t read further. Yet there’s more going on here. In some respects, this feels more like a greatest hits package: the Endgame, perhaps, of the Nava Interactive Universe. As you'd expect from the title, there’s more than a hint of Abzû in its embrace of the blue planet and its flora and fauna.