One of my first instances of feeling massively disappointed by a game I was looking forward to, after starting this website, was with Among Giants’ debut project, a then-promising indie adventure called Distortions. I had written a preview for it back in 2017, and then played it in 2018. What I had imagined would be one of the first truly imaginative and acclaimed Brazilian games ended up being a tremendous mess, a game that tried to bite more than it could chew, a bloated victim of feature creep, lack of focus, and a bit of hubris. Fast forward to 2024, and I’m now covering their latest outing, now backed by an international publisher: Albatroz.

Albatroz is an odd game. It’s pretty but also hideous at the same time. Its art direction is great, whilst still looking like a Switch game.

Albatroz is a game best described as a “backpacking adventure”. You play as Isla, your run-of-the-mill millennial bored with her 9-to-5 job, who decides to take a break from her boring routine and plan a trip to the gorgeous but mysterious Albatroz mountain range, an area based on Andean, Native Brazilian, and Asian cultures. The game starts off in a somewhat promising note, with you driving your car through the nearby roads, appreciating the sights, listening to some actually great Into the Wild-ish music, until you start dealing with the game’s excessive amount of mechanics.

After a brief and pointless tutorial section inside Isla’s home, you’ll find yourself on the footsteps of a mysterious mountain, one which you need to traverse with the help of a really confusing map. The map doesn’t point where you are; it merely tells you to walk to a certain direction until you reach a specific point, and then moving to another point by following another direction. Other maps don’t do much better, be it due to their bizarre “North is South, South is North” configuration, or the fact you need to actually figure out where you are in it. It’s not like I was expecting for a minimap, but if you have a modern Land Rover at your disposal, a GPS system whilst driving wouldn’t have hurt.

Then why can’t you just flip the map?

In the meantime, you need to be aware of Isla’s many meters, taken straight out of a survival game. She has a health meter, a hunger meter, a thirst meter, a tiredness meter for her arm, and one for her legs. Starting off her journey without water or food (what a great backpacker, for real), you need to look for sources in the wilderness, as she consumes nutrients like a bear, and is as thirsty as a bedouin. She also has a temperature meter, with the place she is visiting having more temperature fluctuations than the Hailfire Peaks level from Banjo-Tooie. Her car also has a health meter and a gas tank, with its fuel consumption rivalling a Dodge Viper.

The gameplay is a mixture between Death Stranding, a survival adventure, Among Giants’ previous game (it runs on the same proprietary engine) and your run-of-the-mill walking simulator. I do think it suffers from having too many features and things to care about at once. Too many meters, not enough polish on them. The game has a set goal, with a story to follow, so it’s not just about sitting back and enjoying the sights, even if some in-game prompts tell you so every now and then. There’s also the fact that it’s hard to fully immerse myself in the story when the game, as a whole, feels so unpolished.

This baby can do a whopping nine miles to the gallon.

Now, there’s a huge difference between looking good and having a great art style. When it comes to the latter, Albatroz surely succeeds. In terms of art direction, usage of colors, and so on, sure, this game is pretty. It’s heavily saturated, but pleasing. Characters have somewhat good animations. The problem is that the game looks equally terrible on console. Visual glitches are plentiful, the resolution is unimpressive, the framerate struggles to maintain a mere 30, objects cast no shadows… at times, it felt like I was playing Second Life. That might be something tied to the port I played, but I did notice complaints from other colleagues about glitches and framerate drops on PC as well.

Finally, whilst I actually enjoyed the soundtrack, and didn’t even mind the voice acting that much, the sound department is also clunky. It’s all about its mixing and compression. Do you remember the glorious days of the mid-2000s, when you’d try to download a song on Limewire or Kazaa, only for it to come in a heavily compressed, low-bitrate format? Same here. Grainy, compressed, lacking detail, the whole package.

Whenever there’s any kind of angle on the steep terrain you’re walking on, a meter will be shown onscreen. A steeper incline means you’ll get tired quickly.

I’ll give the devs some credit; Albatroz is a really unique game, and it’s also better than their previous game, Distortions. But it’s also a really buggy, unpolished and unfocused experience. I didn’t jive with the story, and the gameplay got on my nerves at times. It’s not entirely bad, though; you can clearly see the devs cared about the game like a passion project of sorts. It’s just a clear case of feature creep on something that should have been a lot simpler, a lot more straightforward.

Albatroz is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on Xbox Series S.

A copy of Albatroz was provided by the publisher.