I’ve finally 100% completed a game in my Steam library! ABZÛ has been a fun Journey of exploration. In completing it’s goals, I discovered one final secret to the game. One that you won’t find in the list of achievements, even the ones that are hidden.
Shell Collector
After playing it last week, I was close to finishing all the achievements in ABZÛ. I decided I would press on and finally achieve a fully completed game in my library. I started with the Collector achievement, in which I needed to find all the secret shells in the game. I already knew that the temple ruins would show my collection, so I had a pretty good idea where to look.
Only six of the seven levels would have shells. It was obvious from the images which one didn’t had any, so I knew where to start looking. It took me a while, but eventually I found all the shell’s locations.
After getting the achievement I went back to the temple in the first level to see my collection and I noticed something.
I could activate it? I pressed space to activate it and a small animation started playing.
The suit that our character wears was upgraded. A shiny white suit, with the shell emblazoned on the back. When we swim fast, sound waves burst through the water and we move faster.
This is ABZÛ’s final secret.
Completionist
After this I had two achievements to finish. The first one being to find all the hidden pools.
The last turned out to be riding a blue whale as they leapt out of the water. And with that I was done.
Was it worth it? I think so. I genuinely enjoyed this game, and the final achievements, while challenging, aren’t so difficult they become frustrating. You just need to explore a bit more, which is the whole point of the game.
I think having the secret achievements was a bad idea though. The achievements themselves are fine, but it does leave you clueless as to what you need to do, and you end up looking up what they are out of necessity. I think that by not having them hidden, they help to show players a few new possibilities in the game, and there would be some fun things that even the more casual players would get to experience.
Still, overall ABZÛ has been a fun and relaxing experience, and it now holds the honour of being the first Steam game I’ve ever completed all the achievements.
