It is a pleasure to convert sand into water in the sword of the sea Matt Nava is an interview

From the first moment I played Sea sword In the days of playing summer festivals, I knew that it was like the game journey, which led from that wonderful game that was created for years until the moment I was playing the latest game of Matt Nava, GIANT SQUID.

I played the beginning of the game. It begins as an unknown letter in the sand. You can start browsing the sand, like the SSX ice plate. However, you do not ride on the ice. You are riding on a sword, and sliding over the sand as if you were on the plane.

It is strange that the skiing experience was an inspiration for Matt Nava, the game’s creative director and founder of Giant Squid. He told me that he was an inspiration for being on ice, surfing and a sense of moving quickly. When you are at that moment, he said that this extremist sport becomes contemplative. It comes to returning to nature and communicating with it.

We have seen these types of games in Flower, where you convert a city from gray to green spaces, on a journey that slides over the sand, and in other quiet games as well. There are pictures of The Pathless and Abzu, the previous company games, in Sword of the Sea. While the sword is practiced as a mysterious character in the sword of the sea, you do not use it in violence. As a letter, you are looking for something, but I did not learn what was in the short demonstration.

The game has beautiful music, but you play the game in silence. There is no dialogue. No spoken novel. It is like the release of the video game from a poem, or a silent movie. In the game, move, solve the puzzles, and when you do this, you turn the sand to the sea water. It is a very satisfactory experience.

I noticed that it is strange how the giant Squid was overcoming this game, while the rest of the industry was struggling due to lack of financing, high costs and changing game tastes. But NAVA revealed in our conversation that the giant Squid was on the edge of the abyss for a while until the company’s PlayStation support. It was an interesting conversation in the middle of a very messy experimental day at the Summer Game Festival.

Below is a copy edited to meet us.

Gamesbeat: What are some inspiration for this? I feel I see a lot of journey here, and your first game as well.

Matt Nava: Even a path, which was our game after that. Everything was about moving quickly and people. All these ideas. But in reality, inspiration is only to be on ice and browsing myself. When you actually do these things, you move quickly, and they are extreme, but in reality this kind of meditation. I am really interested in the spiritual contemplative aspect of that extremist sport. Usually when you photograph extremist sport video games, it is about the level of the surface. It is not about the real reason for people to return to surfing. You want to be in nature. You want to communicate with nature. You want to explore.

There is this type of magic feeling that you can get. This is what we are trying to achieve with this game. Take movement and speed, but let the flow of flow and start communicating with the scene.

Gamesbeat: Is everything silent? No one talks, no narration?

Nava: Yes, there is no dialogue in the game. There are definitely characters. Another mysterious character will meet the way. There will be a story to play with this world. There are many different vital areas to explore behind the sand. In the advertising clip, you will see that we have just put in the exhibition. There are snowy areas and other things. We tell the story with a kind of atmosphere.

Gamesbeat: Do you still need a narrative designer for that?

Nava: Oh yes. We had a writer in this game. It is honest. We are like, “well, do not write any words, but please help us.” it’s great. In the subsequent version, there are small fragments that you can find and read to learn more about the background of the world. You will be able to read some small poems about history. It is very accurate, the way we do.

Gamesbeat: Is this directly related to your previous games at all?

Nava: All our games are somehow connected. What we like to do is allow players to reach these connections. We will definitely give them some clues and things that should continue. But we never explain how they call. We have images that are impossible and Abzu, so if you play these games, you will get to know some things. You will definitely see that continuous space.

Gamesbeat: Animation and the environment, it seems that these areas in which you already know what to do. Sand and the sea. Was there something very familiar to do this, or did you have to know more?

Nava: It is funny. I thought, “I did a sandy game. I did a water game. This will be easy.” But then we added this new thing, which is that the terrain is moving. It is constantly moving in each frame. This means that we had to create this new technology. This is a very dedicated part of the technology that we have made so that you can move with this wave at high speed. It was familiar, but also a completely new challenge. It was a lot of fun.

Gamesbeat: What time do you think? Is it scheduled to be released yet?

Nava: Yes, it will be out of August 19, soon. We have to finish this thing. We have almost finished.

Gamesbeat: What are the platforms that you will go to?

Nava: It will be on PS5, PC, Steam and Epic Games Store. The first day on the PS5 will be in the PlayStation Plus service.

Gamesbeat: Do you learn a lot about the main character, or is it still mysterious?

Nava: It is very mysterious. Learn more about him through the science you read in the game, these small fragments. It is a kind of this empty lawsuit from shields at first. You see that the drop hit him and make him come to life. It is a kind of this empty creature. He is looking for something.

Gamesbeat: How to compare development with previous projects? Have you moved faster?

Nava: Each game I do is about three or four years. This is about four years of work so far. We started during the epidemic, immediately after shipping it unprocessed. This was the first game that we started from one team. We had to know that. The team met. It is very amazing what they did.

Gamesbeat: How many people are in the team now?

Nava: We have 16 or 17 people. Medium size team.

Gamesbeat: This is intended?

Nava: This is our identity. We would like to keep it small. We are a document of friends, mainly, we make external external games.

Gamesbeat: There is a sword, but generally your games were not violent. Do you have to use the sword?

Nava: It is funny. The first game you made with a sword, we do not fight or anything. There are things that you cut. I have seen little – what I call the seeds of the ocean, where it interacts, descends and brings the water out. Later, there will be a kind of opponent you meet. There are text moments. But yes, there is no moment for a moment in the game. It is really about the movement. The sword is part of the science.

Gamesbeat: Is this thing that anyone should be able to discover? Is it a failure if someone does not know what to do next?

Nava: One of our big challenges when we designed the game was to make it so that you can play and discover how to play without the need to search for anything. Only self -guidance. We secretly teach you things as you go. Initially, we show a small text that tells you how to jump and so on. But we are doing secret things like – if a player actually jumps before we show them this text, we do not show the text. We understand that you already know how to jump. We do not need to tell you. We are trying to get out of your way and let you be in the game, and do not remind you that you are playing a game.

Gamesbeat: Is it your own engine?

Nava: It is an unrealistic engine 5, but our team is unique although we are very small, but we are doing a lot of allocated application. It does not look like all other unrealistic engine games. It has a very unique visual style, and this is really due to the dedicated technique that we put on an unrealistic head.

Gamesbeat: What is difficult to do this?

Nava: The biggest challenge is to make this movement of characters feel right. We have worked on what is feeling the disposal of jumps and interaction with the movement of waves. We do some things like – go faster on the sand. You go faster on the water. You go slower in the tiles. Without any type of speed control of the operator, you can only go automatically to the speed that you feel properly everywhere. Just make sure that everything is fine when moving is the thing we have continued to work for for four years.

Later in the game, you will discover environments containing ice and volcanic lava. Some of the very surreal environments. We take these landscapes that I have seen before. I saw a desert scene. I saw water. But not so. You never saw a mountain of water. The terrain did not move so. There will be places that you do not expect to see in a game like this at all.

That was one of the biggest challenges when I was working this game. I was reaching a piece of understandable art. “Imagine this animation. Imagine these waves are moving.” “You just see me a picture of the desert.” You have to see it in the movement to understand it. But as soon as you do it, as soon as you feel it, everyone says, “Well, get it.”

Gamesbeat: How was this game funded?

Nava: We are partnership with Sony. Sony was our financial supporter. They were great partners. They understood the game early and believed in us, believe in the team. We had a close partnership with them in the past. We worked with them to charge Abzu as an exclusive control unit per day on PS4. They have always been close to studio. They have a great team in the Indian islands.

Gamesbeat: Did you say how successful your previous games so far?

Nava: I do not have these numbers on hand, but the good thing is that it is enough for us to continue. They have succeeded. We still need to obtain funding from major companies, but each of our games found its fans. We put our trailer and we have a dispute. Everyone was crazy. It is really fun to see. They are already the art of fans already, which is a great moral boost for the team.

Gamesbeat: You seem to hit a step here, even while the rest of the industry has struggled.

Nava: It was a difficult time with the closure of many studios. We were on the edge of the abyss for a while. Last year was really cruel. We persevere and fought hard. Sony really came and helped us. They did this so that we can follow and end the game. We are grateful to us to help us reach a really difficult time.