Sable | A beautiful adventure worth your time despite its flaws
A perfect pick if you are looking for a peaceful game after an exhausting day
Play time: (I don’t know, as Epic somehow doesn’t show my play time but I would guess around 6-7 hours?)
Played on: Steam Deck
Difficulty: Default
Sable has been in my backlog for a really long time. Its visuals looked right up my alley, and it seemed like a game I would enjoy very much. Then Epic gave it away for free, but I was still in the middle of other games.
Fellow Substack writer and friend Good Game Lobby has been hosting a monthly game club on his Discord, in which we vote for a game to play during the month and talk about it as we play. It’s like a book club but with games. I enjoy the chill nature of it - you can play at your own pace and discuss the game.
July’s game was Sable, so this was a perfect opportunity for me to finally get to play this game. I had no more excuses! So I booted up my Steam Deck, downloaded the game on Heroic Launcher, and started playing.
Unique art style
Sable’s most prominent point is its striking visuals. Right from the get-go, you are thrown into a beautiful world with a very unique art direction. The art style is apparently called ‘‘Moebius’’ in the comic book world, named after the pseudonym that Jean Giraud used in his works. After researching it, I fell in love with this style and might get into his comics. They really are so beautiful in a way that speaks to my soul.
Sable manages to capture this art style incredibly well. It makes you feel like you are walking and exploring in an art book. Not every game can do that, especially not in 3D. It feels like they took one of Jean Giraud’s works and built the world around it. You can definitely feel the love they had for this art style and the respect for Jean Giraud.
Sable should be more popular for its art direction and assets. If anything, I’m grateful that it introduced me to Jean Giraud. I feel like I stumbled into a great gem mine.
The soft and mellow nature of the soundtrack accompanies the amazing visuals very well. Japanese Breakfast did an incredible job at elevating the experience with this chill soundtrack.
Mechanics
The climbing mechanic is fun. Reaching new places, especially climbing up to the Cartographers scattered throughout the world gave me a sense of satisfaction that I wasn’t expecting. Gliding was also pretty smooth, albeit it felt a bit slow at times.
However, I don’t understand how some of the puzzles passed the QA reviews and playtests. Several of the puzzles use the time mechanic, but there is no way to speed up time. So even if you arrive at the correct solution for the puzzle, you may have to wait until the time is right, which is just mind-blowing to me.
Any puzzle that requires you to wait around doing nothing goes against the basic principles of game design.
In addition, the controls for the hover bike were frustrating. The initial bike you get is intentionally unstable and hard to use, as you can upgrade your bike as you progress in the game. The bike drifts when you don’t want it to, and it flips over when you try to cross over a small bump. This leaves a bad first impression instead of encouraging you to upgrade it, as I found it more tedious to travel to places at first, and didn’t want to ride it at all.
As I upgraded my bike, I did feel more satisfied and in control. After all, more speed = more dopamine, and it succeeded in giving me that. But another player might have been too frustrated with the initial bike to continue with the game.
And I also found that upgrading the bike and getting faster resulted in some performance issues, which brings me to my next point:
Performance
The performance issues were unexpected. I don’t think this game was optimized well, and it shows. Sable is Steam Deck verified, so I expected it to work right out of the box. However, it was frustrating to play the game at 60 FPS. I lowered it to 45 FPS, and it still had those issues. I was stubborn and refused to lower it to 30 FPS, but if you intend to play the game, I recommend that you set it to 30 FPS. You’ll have an easier time. Don’t be like me!
Other players in the server complained about the performance issues as well, so I can say that this is not really a Steam Deck issue. The game is still perfectly playable and looks beautiful, but I had to bring this up, or my review would not be honest.
Story
The story is simple enough. As Sable, you start your Gliding, which is basically traveling the world with your newfound gliding powers. You discover new places, meet NPCs, complete tasks, and collect masks. At the end of the Gliding, you will be choosing a mask among the ones you collected, which will be your job from then on.
I like that they did not make the story too complicated. A game that focuses on exploration like this really doesn’t need it. I felt a sense of ease, knowing that I don’t have to save the world or anything drastic like that. Even the quests that the NPCs give you are very chill. You are never in a rush to complete anything.
The one thing I would have liked to see more of is the messaging system. When we get introduced to the message system, I thought it would be used much more. The NPCs we completed quests for could give us updates on their lives, or they could give us new quests to encourage us to explore areas we would never go to on our own. Instead, the message system is criminally underutilized, and finding new quests is difficult.
I would also say that the lore could be improved. The bits and pieces of the information you get about the civilization before the current one piqued my curiosity, but finding new terminals was difficult, and I didn’t feel like going out of my way to find them in a game that I played to relax. It did not hinder my enjoyment, though - there was enough information that helped me piece the story together.
Overall Thoughts
I enjoyed my time with this game despite the flaws I mentioned. None of these flaws is game-breaking or unbearable. The game is overall beautiful and worth the time you spend on it. It also introduced me to a new art style, which I appreciate.
It is a great game to unwind to after a long and exhausting day. Its flaws unfortunately knock the points down a few notches, but it mostly delivers on what it promises.
When you leave town and the vocals start playing, you know you’re a in for a ride. Loved playing when it released, great review!
I'm a sucker for any game that tries to do something interesting visually. We need more games with a distinctive art style that stands out. Thanks for sharing, I'll consider playing it.