At first, I thought Glaciered resembled a big-budget spiritual successor to Abzû. The trailer for the newly announced game, which sees you exploring an entirely oceanic Earth 65 million years in the future, starts with its bizarre fish-bird protagonist (known as Tuai, apparently) gliding effortlessly through stunning underwater locations. Beneath the giant glacier that covered this far-future Earth, your Tuai flits through underwater caves and carves pathways through carpets of seagrass. It looking beautiful, charming, and relaxing, a glorious chillout adventure in the vein of Giant Squid's mini-masterpiece.
Then, all of a sudden, your Tuai starts kicking the shit out of a shark.
As it turns out, Glaciered is Abzû by way of Bayonetta, a game in which you'll be battering marine megafauna with your incredible fish-bird ninja skills. The Tuai, you see, are apparently a hyper-intelligent species that evolved from birds, making them "successors of the dinosaurs" according to the game's Steam page. Why this makes them fight like a Platinum character is not explained, but your Tuai is apparently on a mission to stop a malevolent force that threatens the balance of the planet's ecosystem, known in game as the Everwinter.
It all sounds delightfully absurd. I'm particularly taken by the game's underwater combat, which'll see you blending a melee fighting system with ranged attacks and specialised dodge manoeuvres to battle an array of oceanic terrors, from giant sharks to futuristic Mesosaurs. At one point in the trailer, your Tuai dodges the powerful tail-whip of a giant sea-monster, before glancing to camera as the tips of its wing-fins turn into ice-blades. It's utterly daft and I am extremely here for it.
The game is being produced by Studio Snowblind, a new independent Japanese developer headed by Kei Shibuya, whose previous work includes games like Project Nimbus and Sumire. There's no word on a release date yet, but would imagine it'll be sometime next year.
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