Abzu's underwater world.
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How Journey art director Matt Nava went from sand to the underwater world of Abzu (interview)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Matt Nava was the art director on the award-winning games Flower and Journey from thatgamecompany. But he broke off and formed his own studio, Giant Squid, in Santa Monica, Calif. And his first game as creative director at his new shop is an interesting underwater-exploration title dubbed Abzu.

It’s a big switch to go from animating the desert sands of Journey to creating a beautiful 3D underwater world in Abzu. The environment comes to life with inspiring music from Austin Wintory, who also did the music for Journey. Abzu is one of the titles being shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in Los Angeles that we can’t wait to see.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.