Sword of the Sea – a game that offers a glimmer of hope to a world in need of revival

It begins, like Journey, in the desert. You play as a lone nomad astride a hovering surfboard that doubles as a rapier. The conceit sounds faintly absurd – an armed Tony Hawk by way of the Fertile Crescent – but has both grace and whimsy. Your task is simple: hunt for hidden streams you can magically unblock using your board. Plunge the blade into the right spot, and water spills forth, foaming across the desert in liquid ribbons. Reeds rise, kelp unfurls, shoals of fish shimmer into being. In an instant, a barren wasteland is transformed into a humming ecosystem.

It offers a direct metaphor for renewal – for the possibility of a single gesture bringing a parched and barren world back to life. That metaphor is as old as literature. In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet strikes the rock and water flows; in Ovid, landscapes metamorphose with divine ease. Sword of the Sea updates the image for an era of more urgent ecological concerns: this is a game less about conquest than restoration; less about combat than coaxing a forsaken planet back into bloom.

The sword-surfboard hums beneath you, cleaving sand, moss and snow while gathering speed as rivers unfurl. The more fluent you become in its movements, the more the game rewards you with sheer sensation. You feel the soft rasp as you carve the snow draped on a mountainside, the clack as you skim tiled rooftops.

Each new space presents a puzzle, often a variation on a simple idea: find the trigger point, plunge the sword, release the waters. Lamps light up, doors creak open, huge chains that arc between structures become grind rails linking settlements. The repetition is deliberate. This is not a game of plot twists but of ritual, where each activation is a miniature sacrament – a reminder that the act of restoring the land can never be a one-off, but must be repeated across the breadth of a world.

The ecological allegory is clear, but the tone is far from didactic. The game succeeds because it foregrounds play. Tricks – 360 degree spins, board grabs– are available, though the focus is on the elemental joy of exploration, the breezy pleasure of crossing distances at speed, of picking out a point of interest on the horizon and transforming the landscape when you arrive at it.

A jellyfish becomes a trampoline; a shark a minibus, the camera automatically zooming in and out to best frame the moment. It is a meditative game, yes, but also a playful one. You may stop to puzzle out how to unlock a cathedral door, but you may also spend 10 minutes looping the same sandbank, perfecting your spins, just to see the sun catch at a different angle.By the end, the world you traverse is no longer barren but teeming: waterways, reefs, living cities are revealed.

The sense of accomplishment is not that of having conquered a foe, but of having resuscitated a world. In a medium that feels dominated by destruction or tussles for territory, it is striking to encounter a game about revival. The sea in Sword of the Sea is not merely water. It is continuity, memory, the connective tissue of life. To carve across its surface is to inscribe a note of hope – that what has been ruined may yet be replenished.

Sword of the Sea by Giant Squid is available on PC, PlayStation 5

Photograph by Giant Squid