Sable
Last updated: 2025-04-07
- Chill, relaxing gameplay and open-world exploration
- Compelling story and world-building
- Fun hoverbike traversal and customization
- Numerous bugs and performance issues
- Clunky controls and camera issues
- Unrewarding exploration and fetch quests
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 81% ¡ Negative 19%. Score: 19 / 100
Positives:
- The game provides a chill and relaxing experience with simple yet engaging gameplay. It offers a low-pressure environment where players can unwind and enjoy the journey without feeling rushed or stressed. The game is often described as meditative and therapeutic.
- The game emphasizes open-world exploration, offering freedom and a relaxing experience without combat or death. Players can traverse vast landscapes, climb structures, and glide through the air, discovering secrets and enjoying the scenery at their own pace. The world design encourages curiosity and rewards exploration.
- The game features a well-crafted story and world-building, with engaging characters and lore. The writing is often praised for its depth, charm, and emotional impact, creating a compelling narrative experience. The story explores themes of self-discovery and finding one's place in the world.
- The game explores themes of coming-of-age and self-discovery, resonating with players on a personal level. It evokes strong emotions and encourages reflection on life choices and personal growth. The narrative is often described as touching, meaningful, and thought-provoking.
- The game is centered around the character Sable and her journey of self-discovery. Sable is a chill exploration game with low-pressure gameplay. The reviewer expresses gratitude for Sable providing a dreamy journey on an alien planet.
Negatives:
- The game is plagued with numerous bugs, glitches, and performance issues like frame rate drops, audio problems, and collision detection failures. These technical flaws detract from the overall experience, causing frustration and hindering immersion. Some reviewers experienced crashes and loss of progress.
- Climbing and bike controls feel clunky, unresponsive, and sometimes buggy. The camera system also contributes to the problem, often getting stuck or providing awkward angles. These issues make traversal frustrating and can even induce motion sickness in some players.
- Exploration feels unrewarding due to the vast but empty map and repetitive terrain. The game relies heavily on fetch quests, and some mechanics like the fishing minigame feel underdeveloped and unnecessary. This lack of engaging content and meaningful challenges makes the experience tiresome.
- The hoverbike, a key mode of transportation, suffers from numerous issues. It frequently gets stuck, fails to summon, or behaves erratically. These problems disrupt gameplay and detract from the overall experience.
- The open world feels empty and monotonous, with large unused areas and a lack of interesting sights. This leads to tedious travel times and diminishes the sense of exploration. Some quests glitched out in the opening segment, causing confusion about what to do.
Gameplay:
- The game emphasizes exploration and puzzle-solving within a vast open world, drawing comparisons to Breath of the Wild but without combat or death mechanics. This creates a relaxed and meditative experience, focusing on discovery and environmental interaction.
- Players traverse the open world using a customizable hoverbike, exploring diverse landscapes and ancient ruins. Customization options extend to the player character with various outfits and masks, providing a sense of progression and personalization.
- The game revolves around a coming-of-age journey where the protagonist collects badges and masks representing different professions, ultimately choosing a path to follow. This mechanic ties into the game's themes of self-discovery and choosing one's future.
- The game features numerous collectibles and quests, often involving fetch tasks and simple puzzles. These elements provide structure to exploration and reward players with currency and items.
- Climbing is a core mechanic, requiring stamina management to reach new areas and solve puzzles. While inspired by Breath of the Wild, the implementation has mixed reception.
Performance:
- Some bugs, such as missing resources or disappearing NPCs, can be temporarily resolved by saving and reloading the game. However, this workaround breaks immersion and indicates underlying issues.
- Players frequently encounter floating objects, such as furniture, rocks, and trees, in the environment. This visual glitch detracts from the game's world and breaks immersion.
- The game uses intentionally low-framerate animations for walking, which some players find jarring and inconsistent with the normal framerate idle animations. This stylistic choice can be distracting and negatively impact the visual experience.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers express strong positive feelings towards the game, praising its unique and captivating experience. They highlight the relaxing, exploration-focused gameplay, beautiful art style, and immersive world. Many recommend it as a must-play, especially for those seeking a chill and artistic adventure.
- Many reviewers suggest purchasing the game on sale due to its flaws or limited content. Some recommend waiting for a deeper discount or a content update. This recommendation is often tied to the perceived value proposition of the game in its current state.
- The game's art style, heavily inspired by Moebius, and its soundtrack are frequently praised. Reviewers suggest that these elements alone make the game worth playing, particularly for fans of Moebius' work. The visuals contribute significantly to the game's unique atmosphere and immersive quality.
- Some reviewers express a desire for more content, stories, and quests. They feel that the game could be even more worthwhile with additional gameplay elements. This suggests that while the existing content is enjoyable, it could be expanded upon to enhance the overall experience.
- Several reviewers note that the game is relatively short. This may influence purchasing decisions, with some suggesting it's more worthwhile on sale. The length also contributes to the game's chill and relaxing nature, as it doesn't demand a huge time commitment.
Miscellaneous:
- The game centers around a coming-of-age narrative where the protagonist, Sable, embarks on a journey of self-discovery. This journey involves exploring a unique world, interacting with its inhabitants, and ultimately defining her own identity and purpose. The story resonates with themes of personal growth, freedom, and the search for meaning.
- The game was developed by a small team, which may contribute to certain limitations. Some reviewers noted that the open world felt overwhelming, and the story felt rushed. The game lacks voice acting, but the dialogues are well-written.
- The game features a distinctive art style heavily inspired by the works of MĹbius, characterized by minimalist vector graphics and a comic book aesthetic. The visual style contributes significantly to the game's atmosphere and overall artistic presentation. Players can adjust graphics and style settings.
- The game features inclusive writing and subtle nonbinary representation. Some reviewers have detected DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) elements.
- The game is set in a mystical, post-apocalyptic world that blends elements of science fantasy, with a stronger emphasis on the fantasy aspects. This world features interwoven tribes, each associated with specific trades or professions, adding depth and intrigue to the setting.
