Abzu dev on the technical challenges of bringing the game to Switch
Abzu will be on Switch this Thursday as a digital download. Ahead of its release, a Reddit AMA was held for the game yesterday.
One of the more interesting comments came about when asked about what it was like bringing Abzu to Switch. According to creative director Matt Nava, there were many “technical challenges” with all of the fish, fog accumulation, and more. We also learn that Room 8 worked on the port.
Nava shared:
Hey thanks! The underwater environment posed a lot of technical challenges. It was great to be able to share some details in that talk.
We had a fantastic dev team at Room 8 port ABZÛ to switch, and it was not an easy undertaking. the game simulates tens of thousands of fish and an equally large amount of dynamic kelp leaves. It also has a unique fog accumulation technique that allows different spaces to have different colors and densities volumetrically. All these critical features were originally designed for the powerful specs of the PS4 and PCs, and hard to be drastically optimized to run on the Switch. I’ll be honest- a lot of the team was astounded that Room 8 was able to pull it off! I am super happy with it, it runs great and the game feels like a great fit for the Switch.
