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The pleasure of transforming sand to water in Sword of the Sea | Matt Nava interview

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

From the first moment I played Sword of the Sea at the Summer Game Fest Play Days, I knew that it was like the game Journey, which led down from that wonderful game created years ago to the moment when I was playing the latest game from Matt Nava’s game studio, Giant Squid.

I played the beginning of the game. You start out as a nameless character in the sand. You start surfing through the sand, sort of like a snowboarder in SSX. Except you’re not riding on a snowboard. You ride on a sword, gliding above the sand as if you were on a hoverboard.

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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.