There’s a joyous moment in the 2012 game Journey where, in a break from trudging through the desert, your robed character surfs effortlessly down a mountain of shifting sand while Austin Wintory’s award-winning soundtrack rises into an uplifting, triumphant melody. Sword of the Sea feels like that joyous moment has been stretched into an entire game.
Matt Nava, director of Sword of the Sea, says that he set out to create something fresh in the snowboarding/surfing genre, where the sea is made of undulating, ever-moving sand, and your surfboard doubles up as a weapon. Nava was the art director for Journey, but he left thatgamecompany shortly after Journey’s release to co-found Giant Squid, which launched the serene underwater exploration game Abzû in 2016, followed by third-person action adventure The Pathless in 2020. Sword of the Sea mixes elements from all of Nava’s previous games. “I think people definitely are going to feel that connection to Journey,” he says, not least because Austin Wintory is returning to compose the soundtrack, but also because Sword of the Sea tells an emotive story without any dialogue – or as Nava puts it, “creating narrative with colour and music and space”.
