I’ve had Abzû sitting on my PS4’s hard drive since 2016. As a game made by many of the alumni of thatgamecompany, makers of beautiful indie games like Flower and Journey, it was an immediate purchase. I wanted to see where those kinds of games would go next.

I started Abzû back in 2016 but never finished it. Probably because despite sharing so much with Flower and Journey it’s not as atmospheric or as tightly designed. It had Austin Wintory’s music and Matt Nava’s art direction but something was missing. One obvious missing piece was Jenova Chen’s design, but somehow the game’s shortcomings felt even more profound. Like it lacked heart. Back then, Abzû was a disappointment.

But now! With the benefit of nearly a decade’s worth of distance I didn’t compare Abzû to Flower or Journey any longer. I just wanted a short game to fill a lazy sunday afternoon with. And it turns out Abzû is actually pretty good! Not novel like Flower or absolutely paradigmatic like Journey. But pretty good!

It’s mostly just about diving around in different colourful sea environments. Very chill, and just when you think the game has nothing more to offer… well, turns out it does.

In the current game development landscape where many games take closer to a decade to make, Abzû is a refreshing snack. A polished, beatiful game made in three years and played through in around 2 hours. Even if it did take me a decade to actually finish it.

From indie darlings to hang out games

What made me bounce off Abzû in 2016 was it’s lack of aesthetic and affective profoundness which were key components of Flower and Journey, respectively. Now, however, I realize Abzû isn’t – or shouldn’t be read as being – in the same genre as thatgamecompany’s games. Abzû is actually more akin to hang out games like A Short Hike and Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. Pretty, quirky, short, and focused on just hanging around in little digital spaces. Abzû was made and marketed in the image of thatgamecompany’s more profound predecessors but I don’t feel less for the game for eventually being something else.

In 2016, I hadn’t really identified hang out games as a genre. And it’s not like I still have, exactly. It’s more of a vibe than anything else, based on ongoing discussions and a vague sense of slow genre shifts in videogames and their production.

Hang out games are a loose group of (often indie) games I’ve learned to recognize via their broad mechanics such as sandboxiness (but, like, small sandboxiness so maybe litterboxiness?), bite-sizedness, atmosphere, simplicity and various visual cues arising from all of the aforementioned. It’s like a cognitive schema for what some games look and feel like; a tool to use when thinking about games, basically, rather than a clear category of games and experiences. And I’m happy Abzû contributed another entry into that personal mental catalogue!

Sometimes all you need is a place to play in

There is a more cynical reading here, too, of course. Of a game that takes the beauty of earlier novel experiences and packages it into a lesser thing, in accordance with the the dominant commercial aesthetic of the 2010s. But that would feel unfair: at its heart Abzû is a nice little mood piece, perfect to play with your kids, if only to show them that you can hang out with, and in, videogames. That videogames are pretty and weird and gentle, and that oceans hold a whole world’s worth of beauty worth fighting for.

It’s not what Abzû was made for, I think, but it’s what it has become, almost a decade after its release. A fantasy of a place where you can spend a while playing in peace amidst a burning world.