Thatgamecompany fanbase will propel Abzu to success, 505 says

505 Games believes it has a Game of the Year on its hands with its upcoming indie title, Abzu.

The game is being made by Giant Squid, a studio formed by alumni from Thatgamecompany, who created the award-winning PS3 game, Journey.

Similar to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, critically we expect Abzu to be one of the Games of the Year for a lot of people at the close of 2016,” 505 Games’ SVP of global brand Tim Woodley said.

Commercially though, Brothers saw a relatively slow build of awareness and appreciation for what that game offered as the accolades came in and word of mouth spread. It was a commercial success but not straight off the bat. Due to its heritage and the Journey and Thatgamecompany fanbase, Abzu will be much quicker out of the blocks in terms of sales, but expect a similar Brothers-style ramp up towards the end of the year as the critics do their write-ups of must-have titles.”

Abzu was revealed on stage at Sony’s E3 2014 press conference, and boasts a few similarities to Journey. That title won numerous awards and was even nominated for a Grammy.