Sable

Sable is what happens when a game asks, “What if growing up was less about killing dragons and more about helping strangers, exploring a beautiful desert, and figuring out who you are—all while wearing cool outfits?” There’s no combat here, and honestly, it doesn’t need any. The joy comes from gliding across vast landscapes on a hoverbike that definitely has a mind of its own, solving light puzzles, and meeting quirky folks who all seem to have their own quiet wisdom. It’s the kind of game that gives your hands something to do while watching shows, but still draws you in with its cozy story about identity, purpose, and finding your place in the world. The art is absolutely stunning, like you’ve wandered into a graphic novel and decided to stay for a while. And the whole experience feels like a gentle nudge toward introspection—with just enough adventure to keep it from becoming a nap. This was one of the most serene, unexpectedly moving, and beautifully designed games I’ve played in a long time. No swords. No screaming. Just vibes, dust, and a whole lot of soul-searching. 10/10 would wander the dunes again, still not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up—but at least I’d look great doing it.

As someone who enjoyed Zelda : Breath of the Wild but wasn't too big on combat, this might be one of my new favourite games. I do have some constructive criticism, but I'll start with the positives. [No spoilers for the story] TLDR at the end. Pros : World : The feeling of open world is truly incredible. It's a perfect mix of Zelda BotW and Outer Wilds. Some might critique the big "empty" spaces, but to me it's a realistic depiction of what deserts are actually like, and the biomes vary anyway. The quick travel makes it almost too easy, so I challenged myself not to use it. The visuals are beautiful, both in the vast deserts and in the town and campments. The amount of detail in these is baffling. While traveling, you will often take a "ooh what's that" detour before reaching your destination. Gameplay : There is no life or durability system for anything, as it's really centered around exploration. I had to get used to a world where nothing was out to get me lmao. There is no real main quest to accomplish. It truly encompasses the concept of enjoying the journey instead of the destination. The side quests are optional, but each of them is a unique experience. Using the bike is a pleasure, and the climbing system is very fun. Puzzles : Though the puzzles and enigmas vary in concept, the main form of puzzle are vessels (what would be closest to the concept of dungeons) and I they're a good brain scratch without being too hard. Story : The main character has her own fun personality, which shows amongst other things in during dialogue. It's really a story about finding your own path (and more precisely, career). Almost every npc is surprisingly chill and wholesome, and a solid part of them use neutral pronouns (I can always appreciate representation). Bonus points because the neutral pronouns were also translated (at least in french as far as I know). The world/planet also has its own backstory, which you can only discover by exploring. It's also an interesting depiction of how social networking works, as far as side quests go. Customization : Though you can mix and match your numerous outfits, the bike has really extensive customization with a lot of bike parts with different stats and colors to choose from. Music : it's nice, it's sweet, nothing to say Cons : The reward system needs some tweaking for sure. Some side quests keep giving you badges for masks you already have, and you can't even sell the excess. Same with bike dyes. It wouldn't have been that hard to replace it with money or something. And some outfits are cool, but for a game that hypes you up so much about acquiring masks, most of them are just plain ugly in my opinion. In the 8 masks I have for now, there are only two that I even remotely like. But hey, maybe that's just me. Some select screens have an annoying feature/bug : sometimes there are pieces of clothing that I just cannot access because the cursor keeps jumping back to the beginning. Same with bike dyes and bike pieces, it's really frustrating. Also they don't use the law of inertia for some reason ? And there are some small general bugs like clipping through surfaces but it really doesn't come up that often. Basically, it feels like it wasn't 100% finished. Once most the quests are done (there are about 29), the world starts feeling pretty empty. TLDR/ : Is it perfect ? No game is. Does it need some tweaking ? Sure. Did it keep me glued to it for hours on end and make me forget all of my surroundings ? Also yes. Now is it worth your money ? Well would you pay this price for (this is a very rough estimate) at least 30 hours of fun and wonder ? That's up to you to decide, but especially if it's on sale, I wouldn't think twice about recommending it.

If you loved AER: Memories of Old, Heaven’s Vault, or Eastshade, you’ll find something special in Sable. It’s a game about exploration and identity. You glide, climb, and puzzle your way through beautifully stylised desert landscapes, meeting NPCs and slowly piecing together the fragments of how the world came to be.

Played the game on Ubuntu 25, using Proton Experimental. Fantastic game for relaxing and just zooming across the landscape. There's something about it that just feels so wistful and the worldbuilding is amazing. I would LOVE to see more from the world of Sable. My single issue is that I haven't been able to watch the very final cutscene as for some reason, the game refuses to start anymore. I suspect that there is a proton issue causing this.

Not only beautiful, but full of intriguing lore and fun to explore. Even if you're initially somewhat turned off by some of the tone and vibe, like I was, it's worth sticking with the game for at least a couple of hours to see if it grows on you.

I am going to try to express how magical this game is while setting expectations accurately. I've played a lot of open world games since Breath of the Wild, but this is the first one to give me the same feeling. Seeing something on the horizon and wanting to know what it is, spending a quiet moment listening to the music and looking at the world around you. It's really wonderful, but obviously not on the scale of a game like BotW. This is an indie team after all! The world is relatively large but not as densely packed as you would expect from a triple A studio. For me this was carried by how amazing the music and visuals are. The story is extremely compelling. It feels wonderful to play a game where you're not a hero saving the world; just a young woman growing up and experiencing the world. Lastly, I've got to talk about the bugs. It's been years since the game came out, so it's pretty clear they won't be patched. I am very forgiving of bugs, and those present in Sable didn't detract from my experience. I got a little bit annoyed, but all of the issues I experienced could be fixed by quitting to the title screen or were minor enough to ignore. Here's the two main ones I remember: - music from previous area playing over current music when fast traveling - shops bugging so they're stuck scrolled past all of the items, making it impossible to see or purchase items (again, for both of these you can just quit to the title screen and keep playing) Overall I'd give this game a 4.2/5! very wonderful :)

Lovely story about finding your path in life and change, with lots of fun exploration and collectibles. Played this over 3 days and loved it.

Even thought the idea behind the game may be nice, bad design choices affect the enjoyment. - Too much going around for little things that don't pay off - Bad and buggy menu design (sometimes the mouse disappears) - Bad design choices (in general) (for example, when you want to leave the game and you choose that option, you have to wait for the splash screen again) - Buggy dialogue boxes (sometimes to be able to pass the dialogue you have to keep moving the mouse or wait for some 30 seconds) - Buggy climbing movements - Bad glider movement + Nice soundtrack In the end, the quest system just make it that the game doesn't really feel rewarding or achieving. It feels a lot of going around almost just for the sake of it. 4/10

Love the art so much! The music is good too. I'm not that far into the game but from what I've seen its great!! Def would recommend!! :)

I really liked this game, the visuals are really stunning and the soundtrack is great. Full of character and personality, yet knows when to get a bit more reflective. There can be some performance issues, but I don't think they overly take away from the experience.

An amazing and non-confrontational game; I absolutely adored it. 10/10

The game is amazing, a coming of age story when a person stands at the precipice of the boundary separating childhood and adulthood, where one goes out into the world, see new places, experience new sensations and in doing so learn more about oneself, about your motivation, your ambition and think towards one's future. Sable is a rare gem, an open world game with a unique tone artistic style, which does what many open world could not, generate a believable fantasy world, with its unique culture and form, yet never bland due to its many areas to visit, bioms and mysteries. It allows you to explore with tantalizing sights just beyond the horizon luring you to head there and see for yourself. There is never a dull moment, instead many discoveries, and in the end you chose based on these experiences you yourself experience in choosing your own mask, a symbolism of your desire and future, you decide for yourself. I wish it didn't end so fast yet it ended just right and i hardly have a gripe for the game, rare for any game nowadays.

Came back to this after years of leaving it in the stack of "games I'm going to play eventually." Not one regret. Certainly not an experience for everyone, but for me the sound design, the art style, the little bits of humanity you get to pick up in tiny conversations was perfect. Also you can get it for > 10$ which is a steal for the journey.

very buggy in ways that tarnish the experience-- rampant audio issues mainly (that i couldn't fix even after trying literally every solution given in the forums). i also just don't really like the game... it's not terrible but it's not great. the story has potential but in execution i find it very boring. especially the characters, the lack of depth and personality is something i could look past if this were on the scale of a game like Breath of the Wild but it's not, and the gameplay isn't fun enough to make up for it. plus there are hardly any characters anyway. the world itself is very empty which obviously makes sense for a desert setting but it's SO. BORING. like, maybe there's a reason there are virtually no open world, exploration-focused games that take place exclusively in this biome (at least none that i know of)... i can't say i recommend it :/

I was skeptical to buy this game at first because of the screenshots and strange looks but the moment I started playing I fell in love with it. If you love climbing and reaching high spots this game is for you. The exploration is rewarded and the world is huge, the story reveals naturally and there is like zero pressure at all. I wholeheartedly recommend this. Hope one day there would be a remake aiming at aesthetics similar to Jusant and Journey.

Sable is among my favorite games--lovely music, sweet storytelling, super fun mechanics of customization and locomotion. Great to play more seriously solo, or casually while chatting with friends. As many others will point out, it can be buggy at times, but I find that the game is good enough to justify playing through the bugs! Absolutely recommend.

10/10, great cozy exploration game. Makes me want to run around forever

Very cute and fun exploration game. Few bugs here and there, some worse than others, but nothing game breaking. Great writing, great environmental story telling, fishing, and amazing visuals.

I think there are a lot of people who would be disappointed about Sable. I know I was the first time I played it. Its marketing presents a beautiful and refined experience that wears its influences like a badge of honour; unfortunately in reality, Sable comes off as simplistic compared to its contemporaries and rather bug-prone. But that does not mean there is no fun to be had, and during a second playthrough and with more grounded expectations, I found a lot to enjoy. I think the first thing people will notice about the world of Sable is that it is large but barren, you’ll spend most of the game gliding between large areas of interest, but you won’t find any little secrets to discover, and you won’t be rewarded for climbing anything outside of key areas. It makes the world more like a cluster of playgrounds rather than one large one, and these playgrounds are sufficiently far apart for the gliding to become grating more than a few hours in. There is a fast travel feature, but I didn’t expect to use it as often as I did. Probably the most fun you’re going to have is during the platforming set pieces. They are all focused and linear and make good use of the mechanics and are visually interesting. Platforming is relaxed and methodical, requiring making observations about your environment rather than quick thinking. You can take on riskier climbs for collectibles, which I recommend because a lot of the mandatory platforming can be too easy. I was disappointed to not find any climbing challenges outside of the main areas of the game. The world is full of mesas and pillars that look like they could hold collectibles at the top, but if there are any, I never found one. Puzzle sections are simple and a nice addition. I never found that they ruined the pacing, though I felt like they ran out of new ideas quickly. Sable makes great use of passive storytelling, the only main direction you’ll be given is to find badges to create masks. There's a sense of freedom the game captures very well. Everywhere is available from the start, but it avoids ever feeling aimless. You'll always have a bunch of quests to focus on, and roaming in a new area will always reveal a couple of locations to check out on the way. Quests are hit or miss, often lacking compelling justifications other than saying: “What else is there to do?” But they guide you to the fun content of the game, so I guess they are correct in that regard. Though perhaps a letdown considering how hard Sable attempts to present itself as a believable world. Sable's world is one of little agency, in fact, the only thing people seem to care about is giving badges to children in some elaborate school career day. At times it often feels like a horrifying Matrix-like facade that no one has lives outside of the context of what you’re doing. You never meet any other gliders on your travels. The game seems to be missing an equal perspective, as you find yourself mostly conversing with authority figures. The game is beautiful, but you probably already knew that from the screenshots. Its striking colour palette and shaders make Sable’s unique visual experience hold up in motion and includes a photo mode for those inclined. I did encounter significant performance issues when using a GTX 1060 6GB. I locked the game to 30 FPS to remove the constant stuttering, and I found the game perfectly playable at this frame rate, though the game could drop to as low as 15 FPS while standing in some of the busier areas of the game, and performance degraded over time, making me restart the game every hour or so. This game has not been updated in a few years, so I wouldn’t expect a fix. Perhaps my favourite part of Sable is the soundtrack produced by Japanese Breakfast. I’m sure, like many others, my interest in the game was piqued after she performed the song “Glider” at Summer Games Fest. I would go as far as saying that this is one of the best game soundtracks of the 2010s, perfectly setting the mood when roaming across the sands or sneaking to catch some skittish insects. Despite Sable’s flaws, I can empathise with the fact that this game was created mostly by two people who were handling a very ambitious project. If you’re a fan of laid-back experience-type games and slower-paced platforms, then I think there’s enough to enjoy in Sable to make it worth your time.

Amazing atmosphere! Would recommend to anyone wanting a good way to spend their time.

Came for the collection grinding, stayed for the gliding. Has its fair share of glitches but if you avoid using mouse on PC its avoidable.

Serene and thoughtful. It's apparent quite a few people put their soul into creating this game.

great game, love the simple gameplay loop, only thing id complain about is the unoptimised rendering it will lag when looking at intensive POIs in the distance. overall great game please try it out

I loved my time with Sable. Artistically inspired and stunningly beautiful, ever so rough around the edges. A painting that invites you in and wraps you up in a way few games can with its visual language alone. The soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast is amazing as well and ties the landscape together. Puzzles are clever, characters are simple, yet quirky and endearing and the game invites you to approach it much the way Sable approaches her Gliding. Wonderful game and well worth your time.

i fw this game in an insane way, i wish it was more well known !! absolutely beautiful design and the quests are captivating and unique. im looking forward to starting another run :)

Quite enjoyable and calm. The story is interesting enough and the game gives you total freedom to do whatever you want.

Despite the lack of combat, I might actually be enjoying this more than recent Zelda games, which I only mention to bolster my point, I'm a massive fan of BOTW and TOTK fan. I personally took a liking to exploring the world on my bike, constantly tantalized to climb, jump, glide, and puzzle through every little corner (plus some absolutely colossal areas as well). The storytelling is neither minimalist nor lore-heavy. I adored the surprisingly emotionally intelligent dialog in the foreground of a distinct and intriguing world. You might expect the world-building to be overly mysterious or wistful, but the culture and unpretentious clues scattered across the map make it feel shockingly grounded. What ties it all together for me is just how clean and beautiful the Moebius-esque art style was in every moment. The animations and music are well done too, nearly overcoming the occasional control jank that takes a few minutes to adjust to (ie the locomotion is slightly tanky/delayed, the camera jumps at times -a more frequent issue with VSync on, and the menu activation/switching could use more obvious indications). Overall, it is an excellent indie open-world achievement! Buy it on sale for only like 8 bucks and savor like 20 hours of it!

Sable is now my favorite game. It has the same magic as Breath of the Wild and Scavenger's Reign. It has some of the best screenshots I've ever seen.

One of the top three games I played last year. Sable is like the exploration parts of BotW or TotK, but I enjoyed stumbling on points of interest and climbing and searching over them to a greater degree. You play as Sable, who is on a coming of age journey to determine what she wants to do as an adult. At any point after about the first couple of hours, you can head back and end the game, but the joy of exploring. I loved finding and returning as many cute wormy guys named Chum, hidden all over the world.

My character keeps getting stuck and the inability to customize keyboard controls and difficulty controlling camera movements make the game very frustrating. I could not change the keyboard layout and also could not leave the keyboard layout screen in settings. This game looks and sounds nice but is barely playable and has bugs

Sable is held together with scotch tape and love, I cannot recommend a game more. If you enjoy exploring a big map for collectables, discovering bits of lore, catching bugs and fishing, or even just vehicle customization this is a fantastic game. It's very buggy, and rendering issues are inevitable but I still wanted to enjoy every bit of dialogue and secret I could find. Beautifully made, and full of kindness. Also chum mask 4ever

Love the chill atmosphere, exploration, discovery, music, no combat.

Wandering the desert, searching for what I wanted to do with my time was the treasure all along

Ugly color work, no textures, jittery animation, no voice acting and verbose, uninteresting dialogue. The lack of voice acting with bland dialogue would have been bad enough, but everyone seems to wear masks, so we're not even treated to facial expressions. I thought the exploration might have been worth it, but this just seems like a student art project, not a game.

Fun and comforting.

so fun and pretty

René Laloux would be proud. So am I.

I freaking love this game

Is good.

This is boring.

mmm sandy

7/10

It's peak