There’s a moment when I’m swimming that I can’t get over. I’m about to start the front crawl. Feet up against the side of the pool, arms pointed forward, face in, kick out, and then…
Naiad reviewPublisher: HiWarpDeveloper: HiWarpPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam), PS4/PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (out on Nintendo Switch in Europe on 23rd December)
…Then I’m suddenly entirely alone in a world of purest blue. That blue! The matte blue of the pool’s floor, coming to me through a few feet of water. With my head down, I can feel the surface of the water arc up over my scalp and shoulders. I have a breath to let out before I start to think about arms or legs, but for now I feel like I could stay in this place forever.
This is a feeling that Naiad, a new game about wild swimming, absolutely nails. There’s no polite pool wall to kick against, and Naiad themselves does a lot of backstroke and a lot of dolphin kicks rather than much in the way of front crawl, but that sense of being in the water, being in the water with a purpose, a sense of belonging, that sense that your skin and the skin of the water are working together to move you along? Naiad absolutely delivers.
Naiad’s a fascinating game, but it was such a thrill, such a watery delight at first that it took me a while to notice this. For the first few levels, it sets out a simple framework. Viewed from the top down, you move around a selection of lakes and little rivers, encountering wildlife, interacting with the things around you in a variety of toylike ways. You can sing to attract animals, so you do a lot of collecting ducklings and returning them to their parent. You can gather frogs behind you and land them on their lilly pads. You can sing to make the flowers grow, or to move bees back to their hives. You’re a sort of nymph, a spirit of the river itself, and in Naiad, particularly in the opening sections, the river is something that takes things home.