Sable

Have you ever wanted to exist inside a Moebius illustration? If so, this is the game for you. The game doesn’t impose a story on you — instead they hand you a premise: you are a girl coming of age who must embark on a pilgrimage atop your mechanical glider. The rest of the game is open for you to explore, discover and piece together lore, and personally reflect to fill in the narrative gaps. It’s pure atmosphere. There’s no combat but the exploration, especially on the hover bike, is so enthralling you don’t need it. The cel-shaded artwork is absolutely gorgeous and makes it feel like you’re inside a graphic novel. A near-perfect gaming experience for me.

unfinished game because devs know idiots (me) will gobble up le indie slop pros: -great artstyle -great soundtrack cons: -visual bugs such as clouds and their shadows stuttering and general visual stutters -cutscene issues such as incorrect camera angles and npcs freaking out -very unfinished terrain and climbing system. I shouldn't be able to get softlocked inside terrain as easily as I did. also just in general climbing on surfaces that aren't 90 degrees flat creates a lot of issues with latching onto surfaces because the game doesnt know if it is climbable or walkable. -audio bugging, sample overlaps, music stutters (particularly when leaving cutscenes) and other things that completely kill immersion -repetitive gameplay loop and mundane quest system -desperately sparse landscape (yes i understand that its set in a desert but the devs could've at least added something like passive creatures you can interact with). -the spaceships are very unfun to explore -the hoverbike is janky to control -cursor frequently disappears in menus -redundant stamina bar

The sense of freedom in this game is refreshing. And by that I mean more the freedom you had to navigate the environment. It reminded me a little of the first Tomb Raider sometimes in that regard as it had that same 'can I really get up there quality'. I enjoyed this much more than any of the more recent sequels to the aforementioned title.

I liked it. Very reminiscent of BOTW but without any fighting. I loved the artistic style and the universe and the gameplay was perfect for kicking back and relaxing. But I have a few complaints regarding optimisation and polish though. Framerate was choppy and many time I was fighting the camera. A constant bug I got was the character clipping off from the glider, really breaking immersion. And while I loved the art style I feel that depth/height was tricky to gauge at times.

Steam and their sneaky "would you recommend this game to other players" question. I don't know you! This game definitely worked for me, once I accepted it for what it is. Not sure if it will work for you. It's kinda a science-fantasy "Kiki's Delivery Service". There's very little pressure: no combat, no damage, no survival. It's *just* exploration and some light puzzle solving. There's no world-ending problem or pressing mystery to solve. I'm someone who bounced off of both "Breath of the Wild" and "Outer Wilds" for different reasons. BotW had real-time combat (which I'm bad at) and a world-ending problem that made exploration seem frivolous. Outer Wilds had beautiful animation and story, but also had just weird controls and needing finer motor skills than I really have to enjoy. If it had been more like "Sable" I probably would have rocked it. Sable required some light platforming but these old shaky hands could handle it alright. There were some weird issues with the camera and clipping into surfaces that were a bit annoying but ultimately didn't subtract too terribly from the experience. The art and (especially) the music were absolutely beautiful and definitely made…

choppy - visual flickers - - games nice tho but its unbearable