Some days you don’t have a decision left in you. Not one. You’ve spent them all on other people, on work, on holding yourself together in a way that looks effortless to everyone watching. And now someone’s asking what you want for dinner and you could genuinely cry.
I found Abzu on one of those nights. I wasn’t looking for a game. I was looking for something that wouldn’t ask me a single question. Abzu delivered on that so completely it almost felt suspicious.
What it is
You’re a diver. You’re in the ocean. That’s it. There’s no dialogue, no instructions, no fail states, no enemies worth worrying about. You swim through colour and coral and shoals of fish so thick they look like weather. The music does most of the heavy lifting, and it’s extraordinary.
Available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. Takes about 90 minutes to finish, though you can stretch it longer if you just want to float.
Why it helps when you’re running on empty
Abzu is as close to a sensory bath as gaming gets. No combat. No instructions. No words. You move through the ocean and everything else does the work. Therapists have recommended it for anxiety, and honestly, you can feel why. It doesn’t try to teach you anything. It doesn’t try to fix you. It just holds you in colour and sound for a while, and then it’s done.
If you’ve got nothing left, this is the one. You don’t have to earn it.
