Sword of the Sea review – heaven really is a half-pipe

When we call a game “rewarding,” what are we really pointing to? In my view, it usually lands in one of two lanes. First, there are games that hand out rewards for strong performance: you collect honors for what you accomplish—whether that’s a fresh look, a Legendary Cuirass, or a couple of skill points. Second, there are games that pay you for simply sticking around and interacting with them, using rewards as an outside push to keep you playing. This is the Skinner box idea, where daily incentives show up whether you’re just logging in or finishing your battle pass. While moving through Sword of the Sea—cutting across sunburnt dunes, nailing 720 spins over cliffs, plunging off mountains, or awkwardly bunny hopping along a ledge I wasn’t sure I was meant to reach—I began to see a third direction. A game that encourages you not only to participate or improve, but to engage with it the right way.

To be fair, this is really a basic, old-school lesson from Game Design 101—Sword of the Sea strongly feels like it was created with teaching in mind. In other words, it’s instructional. It uses rewards to guide you, gracefully and (almost) entirely without spoken instruction. Before I get into an example, though, I want to pause and spell out what this game actually is.

Sword of the Sea is a skateboarding game. It’s also a surfing game. And it’s a snowboarding game. Still, it separates itself from those genres in a way that isn’t quite “conventional.” There’s also a Zelda-like element to it.

At the beginning, as you’d expect from a game built for exploration and breathtaking scenery, you wake up in a cave. After a handful of quick lessons—jump, skate a half-pipe, pay the mysterious vendor their fee—you’re on your own. The rolling dunes—though they’re really waves of sand—pull you forward, setting up that iconic cliff from the opening credits along with a sweeping view of everything you’ll be asked to tackle. And then, yes, there’s a big ramp. Your goal in Sword of the Sea is to return water to this dried-out, empty world. You carve through it, hunting for straightforward clues and following them until they make sense. Between those two moments, from A to B, is where the magic lives. You jump, flip, grind, skid, spin, and pull off tricks across the landscape, helping life stitch back into the world—like a needle working with a vivid blue thread.

What makes Sword of the Sea stand out from a lot of earlier skate-surf-board games is how forgiving it is. Usually, these titles introduce difficulty. Or, even when they’re not outright punishing, they still try to create a test—sometimes weaving that pressure into the objectives themselves. Hit a high score. Build a combo. Survive. With extreme sports, that sense of thrill often comes from how close you are to disaster. Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a good example: it mixes mindfulness with downhill sports and demands real skill, yet it also highlights the crunch that comes with failure—something that, at least for me, shows up more often than I’d like. In Tony Hawk, a stumble is always waiting if your timing slips by even a little. SSX Tricky constantly keeps you on the edge of chaos, with the timer serving as your ever-present master.

None of that is meant as criticism. It’s simply that Sword of the Sea takes another route. What you immediately notice while cruising across that first stretch of desert is its looseness. If you miss a jump, you’re given another way through—at worst, a small detour. If you can’t stick a trick, no real problem—you keep moving, and the flow of play doesn’t get interrupted. Plus, those jumps aren’t exactly subtle; in Sword of the Sea, the sense is that the game doesn’t want you to fail. So when jellyfish rise and turn into makeshift floating jump pads after you release water in a specific spot, they drift toward you as you launch in their direction. Some ledges feel almost pulled in by force. Small golden prisms—the only currency you use with the mysterious vendor—slide toward you automatically as you get closer. And the groups of lamps you uncover through surfing light up when you activate most of them. In the end, being imprecise is allowed. There’s a light task in planning a route and executing it, but Sword of the Sea never becomes truly demanding. It’s less about chasing perfection and more about feeling good. Calm, positive energy wins every time.

The basic idea is simple: solve relatively straightforward platforming challenges in each zone to restore it, area by area.

So where does Zelda come into the picture? You’ve got a lone hero roaming through a lonely landscape, armed with a sword that’s been foretold. There are pots to break, chests to open, and a place that needs rejuvenation—along with a set of wider, pseudo-dungeon spaces filled with gentle environmental brainteasers. The question isn’t really where Zelda shows up in Sword of the Sea. It’s more about what Sword of the Sea would look like without it. And from Zelda, a lot of the other influences here also seem to flow. There’s, for instance, a faint Shadow of the Colossus vibe in the game’s lack of dialogue and in the presence of a huge, enigmatic opponent.

I’d also add that there’s a touch of Sayonara Wild Hearts in the mix—not in the Zelda sense, of course—especially in how your movement is sometimes channeled through narrow corridors while the gameplay is accompanied by a hint of Austin Wintory’s signature scoring. Wintory is Giant Squid’s long-time collaborator on Abzû and The Pathless, and he also previously worked with studio head Matt Nava on Journey. It’s tempting to call the whimsical wonder of an ethereal choir and sparkling piano in a deeply beautiful, indie experience that leans hard into emotion a bit of a cliché by now. But this case doesn’t feel that way. Wintory rarely gets in the way; the music lifts you and keeps moving, gently urging you onward. (As an extra note, Sword of the Sea also uses the DualSense’s speaker and rumble in a way I haven’t really seen matched since Returnal—it acts like a dedicated sword-board microphone, delivering all the shimmer, flicks, and carved motions—I actually would suggest

…playing without headphones for the full experience.)

So where does the whole “instructions meet rewards” idea fit in? Imagine you’re approaching a huge door, and the key detail is that you have to go through it to unlock the next section. But what about players who—maybe a little too habitually—feel the need to double-check that nothing has been missed? That ledge over there, which sits a little brighter and feels slightly more prominent than everything else in the background—could it be something you can leap onto? And if, beside that tall doorway, there’s a thin bit of route tucked into an otherwise plain mountainside—something so subtle it could easily seem like a mistake? What if, on top of all that, the trail actually goes somewhere?

This is the lesson Sword of the Sea teaches, and it almost feels unfair to give it away: whenever you think something might be tucked nearby, or anything looks like it’s worth a quick look, the response is a clear yes. Sword of the Sea loves to hide objects—often they’re small, even bordering on inconsequential, but the excitement is in discovering them. It positions those finds right where you’re most likely to hunt them down. That’s where the real point comes into focus. The first time your curiosity is tugged, you receive a straightforward reward—essentially the designer giving you a quiet thumbs-up. After that, the moment you feel that same spark, you already know to stop and check. If you’ve ever had that childhood urge to hop over the edge of a map, breaking out of the game’s borders to climb an unclimbable wall behind a shut-off castle, Sword of the Sea nudges you toward doing exactly that.

There are a few minor snags, though they’re genuinely small. In a couple of moments where you swap what you’re riding—details I won’t spoil—Sword of the Sea’s controls can feel a touch unsteady, as if a burst of short-lived responsiveness tries to be too responsive. And while its final stretch is both stunning and necessary to close out the tale of an age-old conflict, it may not land as powerfully as the pure rush of exploring the open world on your own.

Then—suddenly—there you go. A last, confident payoff. Wondering if you can just wander through this game and make it your own, adding a bit of flair as you go? The answer is yes. For many of the questions you’ll ask yourself in Sword of the Sea—can I get to…? Will I eventually…? Is this detour worth it?—the reply is always yes. What started out as a place to explore with a sprinkle of style becomes a true playground: somewhere you can now control confidently, helped by a smart mechanical tweak that shifts your perspective.

And really, it’s gorgeous. Beyond that sea of desert, you’ll skim across the tops of nautical, abandoned city buildings; slice a path through ice; make your way up towering, bony ridges like you’re striking a xylophone; and launch yourself over mountainsides. Sword of the Sea understands why it matters to place you on a steep rise and to reveal the full, sweeping world from there. It also understands the value of cause and effect—blending the lesson-like structure of play with moments that feel more expressive and open-ended. Like many games, it examines the deep, personal bond we can form with the natural world when we interact with it, stay in constant contact with it, or simply fly through it at speed. There’s a mindfulness in letting the ocean, the powder, and the smooth curve of the halfpipe carry you for once, instead of trying to wrestle everything into your own control. “It’s truly about how movement is a way for you to connect with the world,” Nava told me earlier this year. “You’re racing down the mountain; you get to experience all of the mountain very quickly. It’s the closest you can be to being everywhere at once.” How extraordinary do you think that feels?

A copy of Sword of the Sea was provided for this review by Giant Squid.