There’s a lot to love about Sword Of The Sea. The little indie hit by Giant Squid, makers of The Pathless, Abzu and also Journey have once again made a fascinating meditative experience where you’re calmly explore a wondrous world filled with beautiful imagery and scintillating music.
But there’s one particular aspect I find Sword Of The Sea to be brilliant. For a game that’s mostly about the vibes, the game feel of it is excellent. It’s even more impressive as it combines two specific gameplay mechanics that I don’t think would’ve mix this well: skateboarding and platforming.
Let’s back up a bit. Sword Of The Sea has you play as this Wraith, waking up from what seems to be a long slumber with a sword at hand. It’s not just any sword, it’s a Hoversword. Just like the protagonist in Metaphor: ReFantazio, Wraith’s first instinct with having a sword at hand is not to swing it, but shred on it as if it’s a hoverboard.
It may not have wheels, but Sword Of The Sea’s main traversal is more or less a skateboard in the same fashion of a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game or a Skate game. More Tony Hawk though, as the sword gain speed on its own rather than having to pump and push the board with your foot like Skate, or a realistic skate sim. The physics and handling of the sword is heavily inspired by skateboarding games. Heck you can pull skateboard moves. It may label the trick names as something else but that’s a pop shuvit when you charge up your jump in full. You can do nose and tail grabs, even melon grabs. Wraith has the instinct of a skateboarder—why would they pull out the sign of the horns while doing a grab trick unless otherwise?
Traversing with the Hoversword like it’s a hoverboard or a skateboard (and even like a surfboard/snowboard, there are waves to catch and snow/sand to carve in Sword Of The Sea’s vast landscapes of land and sea) makes so much sense. But there is one problem with skateboarding games: making precision movements suck. Skateboards move based on momentum, and it can feel so sluggish when making you just want to inch a little bit here and there, and scarily unwieldy at high speeds. As it should.
It reminds me of Airblade, a sick little game made by Criterion Games, yes the makers of Burnout and previous caretaker of the Need For Speed series, where you engage in this action-adventure story but you’re tied to a hoverboard and designed with the same principles of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games.
It’s too ambitious for its own good, as I remember struggling to do the simplest objectives that would make so much sense in a platformer but utterly awful when your two feet are firmly attached to a board. Skateboarding games’ solution to this is to allow off-board movement, one of Tony Hawk’s Underground biggest innovation to the genre.
Sword Of The Sea has a different approach to this problem. Wraith doesn’t get off the sword unless they’re interacting with an object or if it’s in a cutscene. But the sword loses all speed and momentum the moment you let go of a direction input. You can stop dead on point, consistently.
That little change from the status quo of skateboarding physics as portrayed in video games is mega, and that’s all it takes for Sword Of The Sea to be able to add proper platforming. Now you have precise controls when you only need to do minute movements. And having to make multiple jumps doesn’t mean you need to deal with having to maintain momentum.
It’s a fascinating choice, and it pays off. Sword Of The Sea shines as a 3D platformer. There are various moment in the game where the level sprawls out, letting you explore a good chunk of the environment however you want.
The jumping is precise. Air control feels great. You have not just a double jump but a triple jump right from the get-go, with more traversal options revealed later in the game. There are secrets and little goodies in hard-to-reach but reachable areas to reward the curious hoppers, explorers, and the movement sickos. In short, it followed the perfect recipe for a proper 3D platformer.
And this is all enabled by allowing the sword not to behave like a typical skateboard/hoverboard/surfboard/snowboard at all times.
While there’s a lot more to love about Sword Of The Sea, from its striking visuals (how many nickels am I getting for playing a game that depicts underwater over land this year? At least two? I swear there’s one more) to the sparse yet concise storytelling and worldbuilding.
But the one thing I can’t stop thinking about this game is how it successfully marry two seemingly conflicting movement mechanics and ended having the best of both worlds. As a result, Sword Of The Sea feels oh-so-good in the hands. It has that good game feel. If you scoff at the idea of playing relaxing games because you barely press buttons, Sword Of The Sea is built for you—and admittedly, me—who needs some meaty traversal or movement mechanics to really enjoy a meditative journey.
In a year where we see a new Tony Hawk game and a new Skate game released, and the indie game Skate Story coming later this year, Sword Of The Sea should be sitting at the same table. This is unassumingly an impressive take of a skateboarding game. And yes it is a skateboarding game, there are skate parks where you must rake in the highest score within a time limit.
Sword Of The Sea is out now on PS5 and PC (Steam). It’s currently in the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for PS Plus subscribers of Extra tier and higher.