Sword Of The Sea is an enveloping, but not cutting meditation on "flow", Journey and vintage Tony Hawk

"The onshore is dead. What bash you bash with a sword?"

Back erstwhile Matt Nava was creation manager for glistering upland pilgrimage Journey, helium and his colleagues astatine thatgamescompany took a probe expedition to California's Pismo beach, a swathe of godforsaken that rolls close up to the Pacific Ocean. The spectacle of onshore and water overlapping did a fig connected Nava. "It looks similar the dunes of the Sahara, you know, these monolithic soil dunes," helium tells me. "But it's a beach, and truthful the water is close there. And it's astonishing visually, due to the fact that you person the waves of the ocean, and you person these soil dunes, which are question shapes, and it's truthful casual to ideate them moving conscionable similar the ocean."

You tin surely spot that optical instrumentality successful Journey, with its rippling furls of soil and cloth and yes, its aquatic areas. But it comes to the fore successful Sword Of The Sea, the latest flow-me-do from Pathless and Abzu developers Giant Squid, which I played for 30 minutes astatine this year's Summer Game Fest. The crippled casts you arsenic a golem "Wraith" roused from dormancy by a h2o drop, who zips astir connected a hovering, jet-propelled magical blade. The satellite is simply a sun-baked dustbowl, but it heaves similar an ocean, a dependable aureate undulation that tin not lone beryllium surfed, but transformed into superb bluish h2o by means of puzzles that impact glyphs and lanterns.

These transfigurations typically make shortcuts and cathartic speeding opportunities. The hoversword travels overmuch faster implicit water, and the 1 large puzzle I completed successful the demo saw maine activating glyphs astatine peripheral temples, past giddily riding the froth backmost down to a immense gross astatine the area's heart. In the process of the world's rewatering, oversea creatures erupt from the depths and athletics overhead successful a shimmering procession. Some of them, similar the columns of bouncy jellyfish, treble arsenic platforming props. It's gorgeous, though I admit, it gave maine a definite anxiety. I pictured flocks of maddened gulls hounding my quality similar a North Sea trawler, plucking astral tuna from the aerial oregon being devoured by them successful an orgy of communal predation. I pictured the soil and h2o churning red.

Don't expect overmuch bloodshed successful Sword Of The Sea, though. This is, aft all, a crippled successful which a limb has go a surfboard. The Wraith is an past warrior searching for caller purpose, present that each of the wars person been fought. "The onshore is dead," Nava - Giant Squid's cofounder - explains/hints. "What bash you bash with a sword? There's nary constituent to having a sword but to find a caller identity, you know?"

There are nary enemies to battle, but determination is an antagonist successful the signifier of different Wraith, glimpsed astatine a region with sword successful hand, who represents the bequest of unit you're trying to shuck off. The world's troubled history, meanwhile, is to beryllium unravelled Journey-style from murals recovered astatine temples. Some of these besides service arsenic optional situation rooms wherever the crippled flowers into a score-attacking surfboard sim, with players delving into half-pipes and chaining aerial tricks.

The boarding elements gully connected another, much caller excursion: 1 to California's Mountain High, a insignificant Mecca for snowboarders. "It's a magical place, due to the fact that it's a vast, level desert, but past there's a upland with snowfall connected it, and erstwhile we were there, determination was a snowstorm," Nava recalls. "You instrumentality the assistance up to the precise top, and you spell into the clouds, and you travel down the mountain, you travel retired from the clouds, and you tin spot retired to the desert, and you're connected the snow, and you're going fast, and you spot truthful galore kinds of environments truthful rapidly - the question itself lets you recognize the abstraction better, due to the fact that you get to spot it each together. And truthful it's this spiritual benignant of moment, you know, and I deliberation that that's thing video games tin springiness a player."

Image credit: Giant Squid

In this way, Sword Of The Sea furthers Giant Squid's preoccupation with "getting into a travel state, uncovering a meditative quality, conscionable exploring and moving and uncovering a transportation with the situation and nature." Such mystical moments aside, the crippled is steeped successful fondness for aged snowboarding and skateboarding games, with their accent connected moving not conscionable fast, but inventively. "Not a batch of exploration games truly absorption connected question similar that," Nava says. "And truthful this game, you know, benignant of took ideas that had been explored successful those games [and] enactment it successful a caller context." He suggests that the likes of 1080 Snowboarding and Tony Hawk person an unintended "meditative" quality, arsenic you suffer yourself successful the combo chain, which Sword Of The Sea shifts to the centre.

The constituent of having a satellite that swells and falls similar an ocean, meanwhile, is to promote you to deliberation astir inertia successful a much organic, continuous mode than, say, the grapplegun-style shoot-to-move mechanics of The Pathless. "As you spell downhill, you get much speed, and truthful you're ever trying to spell up truthful you tin spell down," Nava says. "And that benignant of gives you that airy engagement with the environment. You're reasoning astir the waves, you're reasoning astir the space, but it's not similar your full focus."

I enjoyed my clip with Sword Of The Sea, not slightest due to the fact that I bash emotion being the centre of attention, and this is the benignant of syrupy-shiny ocular feast that draws a assemblage astatine an expo. I was conscious of oohs and ahs down maine whenever I successfully roused a geyser of water fauna from the restless salvages of this world. It's a crippled of deftly nested smaller beauties: erstwhile zipping implicit a terracotta rooftop, for example, controller rumble communicates the bushed of the tiles beneath.

I am, however, mistrustful of the game's familiar, therapising recourse to "flow" arsenic a conveyance for idiosyncratic liberation and healing intimacy with "natural" landscapes. In the years since Journey's heyday, "Flow" has been overmuch criticised arsenic a intelligence authorities amenable to capitalist cultures of dependable productivity and consumption. In his publication Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject, for example, Braxton Soderman discusses however celebrations of travel enactment the accent connected individuals fixing oregon astatine least, "coping" with problems that necessitate corporate organisation and effort.

Sword Of The Sea appears to sum up this reasoning successful having you singlehandedly reconstruct a wartorn scenery by moving fluidly done it. Given the inspiration Nava and his colleagues person taken from the wilder parts of California, its seems appropriate, if perchance on-the-nose, to constituent retired that this is simply a authorities defined by chronic h2o shortages. The game's premise of turning godforsaken into h2o risks a definite grade of poisonous irony: it's a fabrication for the larger homeowners who privation to tally their lawnsprinklers each week round.

Image credit: Giant Squid

I can't ideate however Sword Of The Sea mightiness critique the conception of travel without jolting the Wraith cleanable disconnected his hoversword and scuttling the phantasy of, let's beryllium blunt, touristic immersion successful geography that Nava positions arsenic a question of hypnotic opposition betwixt fluidity and aridity. But I'd similar to brushwood some benignant of reflection present - an implicit probe of flow's history, possibly gathering connected Nava's characterisation of the skating sims of the nineties and noughties. Given however elegantly Nava and his colleagues person worked with "flow" successful their erstwhile games, I'd beryllium fascinated to spot them enactment this thought to the sword.