On ’Sable’: "You’ll See Other Quests in the Game That Are a Bit Silly"
Gliding in a womblike red ball through Sable’s sky-high mountains and technological marvels is as efficient as it is therapeutic. There are multiple modes of transportation offered in the game, but this is the coziest one, and it allows the player the greatest deal of pinpoint accuracy in traversal. After all, Sable is about comforting the player into a relaxed fugue state, then pulling the rug out from under them with one of the game world’s many surprises around the corner. Indeed, while Sable is gorgeous and endlessly GIF-able—the developer teased the game’s otherworldly beauty on Twitter for years before revealing what the gameplay would actually entail—its demo indicates that it’s also filled to the brim with surprising, acerbic humor and a lighter-than-expected, whimsical atmosphere.
Sable is an open-world puzzle adventure game from the UK-based studio Shedworks, where you zip around a zonked-out desert sci-fi world on a hoverbike, finding temples, items, and characters among the rocks. It’s quite relaxing and blissed out.
“You'll see other quests in the game that are a bit silly. We wanted to provide moments of levity to juxtapose with those more grandiose, atmospheric moments, because I think otherwise it can become a bit one-tone,” creative director Gregorios Kythreotis tells me about the wonderfully alluring yet mischievous world of Sable, during our lengthy Q&A. The game has a stunning sense of verticality, as well as a stamina climbing mechanic right out of Shadow of the Colossus, and the gliding adds an entirely new way to perceive and attack your surroundings.
