malabagaa

Estimated total reading time: ~2'

Title Developer Publisher Release date Regular Price Bundled Cards Status Achievements Playtime Cards idling
ABZÛ Giant Squid 505 Games 2016-08-02 19,99 € Beaten 10 of 12 (83%) about 5 hours N.D.
ABZÛ Reflection
Complete the adventure. sg win! screenshots


I think there’s no need to tell you how nice ABZÛ looks. Everybody already spent thousands of good words about it.
Let me only warn you about the lack of gameplay: you can swim, true, but it’s basically a walking simulator. A swimming-simulator, if you prefer =P

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my time playing ABZÛ, you cannot dislike those places.
The game doesn’t reveal much of the story.. you can do your own speculations, you can even assume it isn’t set on Earth and everything would be alright. Otherwise, I couldn’t explain stuff like water flowing underwater and such.
Also I didn’t like the presence of — I don’t want to spoil anything so I’m putting this warning first and covering the rest — as I was saying, I didn’t like the presence of those bombs. It felt like they were out of context (with hindsight that was probably devs intent) and they were tedious to avoid at times. Even entering those “pools” wasn’t always an easy task, but all that could be due to the fact that I played with keyboard+mouse (didn’t even found a way to rebind keys).. I hope playing with controller isn’t that strange.

Watch out where you go. Game’s basically bug-free but once I tried going back to the previous area (there are strong currents that brings you from one point to another) and kind of got stuck, then passed through a wall and ended up somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Not nice with those too-long loading times I experienced. Have you experienced them too? Hope it was some fault of my system and not because of Denuvo..that will make it (Denuvo, that is) only more detestable.

Missed achievements for collecting all the shells and free all pools.
Missed a shell first time I went through one of those strong current (I think the game calls them jetstreams), seen it but up to then I had collected ‘em all by touching them, didn’t know you could collect ‘em with that sonar-like skill you have (discovered right before the end) -_-
Also pretty sure I missed a pool when I first met one of those pyramid; of course I went to check it and when it opened I went inside. Too bad.

Trent

Yeah, I needed a guide for a couple of those shells. I didn’t have any performance problems, and my machine’s not that great. Never thought to try to swim back through the jet streams, LOL! Yeah I can imagine it being tricky with kb+m. It took me a little while to get used to the controls, until I inverted the y-axis– which is strange because it’s the first time I’ve ever inverted a y-axis in a game. Go figure. Thanks for the update!

If anybody reading this wants a copy of ABZÛ to play, I may have an extra copy for you. I may check SG and/or Steam profile for certain things. Inquire within or add me on Steam.

malabagaa

I think I missed that one only, but I’m not sure.
Good to hear, must be my fault for constantly having lot of stuff running on my laptop then =P

It was, mostly because a simple press of a key made it turn about 90° -_-
Oh, I also tried inverting the y-axis because it felt kind of weird to move at first; but when I changed it felt “weirder” and changed it back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thank you for taking time to read and comment ^_^

..oh, did anyone contact you for that copy? just curiosity, because I believe it’s kind of a high-wanted game.. surely it’s a nice act from you that could make someone’s day better.. I mean, I would have been happy to get such a chance :)
Thanks on their behalf too ^_^

Trent

Nope, nobody. Granted, one would only see my offer if one went to read your comments or comment on your post, and read my comment to the end. So…probably nobody? :p

JaffaCaffa

If you were interested I’d recommend watching The Hidden Message of ABZU (ABZU Story Breakdown) I found it very interesting and saw some connections I’d missed the first time while playing.

malabagaa

Thanks, his are more articulate conclusions than mine but not very different.. I thought/hoped there was some more “hidden” message =P