I’d just finished Far Cry 3 and was looking for a less…murderous game to play next when I stumbled upon Abzu in my steam library. My new projector had just arrived too, so I was hankering to try it out on something beautiful. I was originally planning to watch a movie, but I’d heard Abzu was a movie-length game and decided to give it a go instead.

Truly an awesome decision, me. I’d never played Journey because I’ve never owned a console, but I was really bummed about it. It’s exactly the sort of game that I think is awesome and underrepresented; simple and beautiful and engaging. I don’t always want to think or kill as much as games tend to ask me to.

Abzu is full of little mechanics that reinforce the point of the game through how they feel. The core experience here is “What would it be like to explore ancient underwater runes surrounded by beautiful ocean creatures?” and boy does it deliver.

There are these ‘meditation points’, which are your typical ‘spot with a view’ checkpoints, and once you unlock them you are able to travel to them at any time to just sit and watch the fish. Is this something I ever see myself doing? Probably not, but it was still fun to collect them, and to take a moment and experience each as I did so. Especially on the projector, it’s like a giant aquarium fish tank in my living room.

This fish tank is interactive too! You can ride bigger animals, both to get around quickly and because it’s awesome. You can unlock new creatures for your “aquarium” by finding them in these little holes around the world.

One of the highlights in terms of gameplay is these tunnel sequences, where you are hurtled from point A to point B. You have limited control, but can try to swim through schools of fish. If you miss them, no big deal; your journey continues. If you swim through them, you’re rewarded with a sweet visual and sound effect and the fish all start to follow you and MAN it’s satisfying. The music carries a lot of weight here as well, flowing along with you to guide your sense of wonder.

The audio and visuals are both excellent, which really sells the whole experience. It’s a game that hinges on that sense of awe that comes with exploring another world, and the fidelity with which they’ve created it is top tier. I highly recommend this great GDC talk on how they managed it all.

Bits of story and characters weave their way into this fabric too. You pick up these helpful robot friends along the way, who you can beep patterns at and who respond in kind. Subtle, but brilliant. There’s even a shark who you form a bond with, and all this story is told through clever interactions that keep you invested.

Some of these are simple puzzles, which mostly act as a catalyst for the player to experience more of the beautiful world. The variety is appreciated though — little twists like bombs that you can’t swim too close too or they zap you add a sense of danger to an otherwise serene landscape. Avoiding these bombs can be trickier than you’d expect thanks to the slightly awkward swimming controls. In a few places, you have to navigate into a narrow passage and I just kept missing the entrance and hitting the wall.

Thankfully, Abzu isn’t the sort of game to punish the player for such clumsiness. If you feel at home in this deep ocean world, the game will reward your mastery and add extra sparkles to your experience. If not, you can just keep on exploring at whatever pace feels right for you. In a game that’s very much not about mechanical mastery, this was a good choice.

The thing is, they do want you to feel at home down there–eventually. The controls are just awkward enough that you get the hang of swimming over time, and the developers give you some awesome opportunities at the end to flex that growth. Of course, if you’re still terrible at swimming anyway like I was, there are easier paths then too.

All in all, it took me about 2 hours to play through and I was enthralled the whole time. I love snorkeling and appreciate this kind of simplistic game, so I’m very much the target audience. Still, with a game this short and cheap, you owe it to yourself to at least get your feet wet.