Sword of the Sea review – heaven really is a half-pipe
What do we actually mean, when we call a game rewarding? I reckon typically it’s one of two things. First you have games that reward you for playing them well: rewards are given in return for achievement or superlative skill – a new outfit, a Legendary Cuirass, a skill point or two. Then you have the ones where you’re awarded simply for playing the game at all, that kind of external stimulus for engagement. The Skinner box method, basically, where you get daily bonuses for everything from simply logging in to maxing out your battle pass. What Sword of the Sea reminded me, as I lanced my way through desert dunes, 720’d my way across cliff edges, nosedived off a mountain face, or just awkwardly bunny hopped my way along a ledge I wasn’t sure I was actually meant to climb, is that there’s a third way. A game that rewards you neither for just playing nor for playing well, but for playing it .
Sword of the Sea reviewDeveloper: Giant SquidPublisher: Giant SquidPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out 19th August on PC (Steam, Epic), PS5
In reality this is really a bit of good old Game Design 101 – and Sword of the Sea feels like such a game designer’s game. What I mean is it’s instructional. Sword of the Sea uses rewards to teach, elegantly and (almost) wordlessly. But before I give you an example I should probably take a beat to explain exactly what it is.
Sword of the Sea is a skateboarding game. It’s also a surfing game. And a snowboarding game. It’s also not really like any of those kinds of games, at least not in the way you might have them in your head. And it’s also, kind of, just Zelda.
In the beginning, like in all good games of exploration and beautiful worlds, you start in a cave. A few quick lessons later – jump, skate a half-pipe, pay the mysterious vendor their toll – and you’re out. Rolling dunes – really waves of sand – invite you onwards, to the archetypal opening-credits cliff edge and a view over all there is to be conquered. And then, , a big old ramp. Your goal in Sword of the Sea is to return water to this dried out, ruined world. You carve through it looking for simple clues and following them to logical conclusion, and between those two points, the time between A and B, is all the magic. You jump, flip, grind, skid, spin, and trick your way across the world, a needle with a searing blue thread, weaving life back into the seams of nature.
Where Sword of the Sea differs from so many skate-surf-board games before it is in its forgivingness. Typically these kinds of games are hard. Or if not hard, at least a challenge, often with that sense of challenge baked right into it, in fact, delivered via imperative. Get a high score. Chase a combo. Survive. Extreme sports like these are extreme, after all, much of their thrill coming from the closeness with which you can get yourself to death. So it goes in, say, Lonely Mountains: Downhill, a game that tangles mindfulness with downhill sports with supreme skill, but which places great big emphasis on the of failure (which if you’re anything like me happens quite often). With Tony Hawk there’s always a stumble waiting for you if your timing’s off, a trip hazard lurking either side of the beat. SSX Tricky pits you against others as well as yourself, always at the edge of chaos, and where the timer is god.
