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"When you leave today, you will no longer be Sable, clan-child of the Ibexii. You will simply be Sable, and the rest will come."
Ibexii Elder Jadi

Sable is an Adventure Game developed by Shedworks and published by Raw Fury. It was released on September 21, 2021 for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. In it you play as Sable, a girl belonging to a nomadic tribe in a vast, ruin-strewn desert known as the Midden who is about to depart on her Gliding, a rite of passage where young tribe members will explore the world until they can decide their course in life, represented by choosing a mask—one that marks their allegiance to one of the many trade guilds operating in the Midden, or perhaps one representing a more esoteric life calling.

For this, you are given a hoverbike, a Gliding Stone, and a hint to go to a nearby station in the next region over. The first is used to navigate the vast desert, the second gives you the power to glide gently through the air to help with platforming and to protect yourself if you fall from one of the Midden's many heights, and the last is a (loose) suggestion on where to start off Sable's journey into the wider world to experience new things, meet new people, do quests, discover the hidden history of the world, and try to decide who she wants to be.

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Sable contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Adventure Guild: Conspicuously absent. The closest any guild in the Midden comes is probably the Guard's guild, who mostly function as City Guards in Eccria rather than doing freelance questing (the guild is stated to sometimes send members out to solve problems elsewhere, but this is never seen—the only “wandering” guard you meet in the game is retired). Interestingly enough, people seem to treat Gliders (including you) as this, as they have a reputation for doing whatever work will earn them the badges they need to obtain guild masks.
  • The Alleged Car: During the course of assembling your main hoverbike at the start of the game, one of your tribe members gives you access to a scrapped-together, barely-working hoverbike that he hastily dubs the Sandcutter. It's very slow, the engine constantly rattles and bangs and the thruster leaves behind a massive smoke trail, plus the hovering tech clearly isn't working right because it constantly scrapes against the ground and sometimes ricochets violently off of uneven terrain.
  • All Hail the Great God Mickey!: Inverted, somewhat. The Hicaric Observatory you can visit has a closed-off diorama room featuring a seemingly-telepathic technological Info Dump. It depicts the planets in the game's solar system, including the glowing shield of the Perpetual around the Midden that is keeping "The Maw", represented in the diorama as a black pyramid, from consuming it. Sable's internal commentary reveals a sense of unease in the veracity of this story. Given the similarities between the Atomic corporation logo and the Maw seen in this diagram, it's likely that they are one and the same. The negative portrayal in the Hicaric observatory likely stems from inherited distrust in the company by the original Atomic survivors due to being apparently abandoned after the company's greed resulted in their stranding in the Midden.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Clothing shows up as a reward for various challenges and sidequests, such as the giant face puzzles. Unless it's a mask, however, all it does is change your appearance.
  • Apocalyptic Log: You can find these in the helms of the wrecked Atomic ships. They tell the story of the original crews, who went to this solar system to embark on a terraforming effort, were stymied by the presence of an unknown energy field around the planet, tried to land anyway due to corporate pressure, and were subsequently trapped when the energy wrecked their ships and blocked their communications, necessitating the use of damaged terraforming equipment to create a "habitable" environment… that is, habitable only after hundreds of years of waiting for the radiation they spewed into the air to clear. You can also find one in the Atomic ship remnant in the tutorial area that seems to instead chronicle the attempts of a pair of modern Midden natives to fly the wreck, which ends in a massive crash and an unknown fate for the would-be pilots.
  • Benevolent A.I.: Sarin is the AI of the massive Whale, a ship found crashed in the Redsee, and is also networked across all the Atomic ruins in the Midden. He’s the only remnant of the original Atomic ships' crews that he reveals through audio logs were employees of the Atomic corporation from Earth; visiting all six of his helm terminals in various shipwrecks allows you to discover the truth of how people came to live in the Midden, and unlock the unique Whale Ship bike parts and a space suit outfit, including its own "Atomic Mask" (actually a spacesuit helmet) that can even be selected during the final Choosing Ceremony at the end of the game.
  • Benevolent Precursors: The original terraformers, after crash landing on Midden, opt to continue the terraforming process. The radiation it produces is expected to kill them, but will ensure the planet is habitable for their descendants and any future inhabitants.
  • But Now I Must Go: Before completing the final Gliding ceremony, Sable parts with Simoon, so it can be passed on to the next Ibexii child who begins their own Gliding.
  • Cel Shading: Sable has a very eye-catching visual style, with bold, bright desert colors and visible outlines.
  • Coming of Age Story: Sable's quest is to find her place in the world, apart from the tribe she grew up with.
  • Compelling Voice: The Wyrm, or so one poor adventurer claimed. She certainly believed it, and was eventually convinced to end her own life to feed it.
  • Cool Bike: Your trusty hover-bike Simoon. Even cooler when upgraded with rare bike parts.
  • Crow's Nest Cartography: Cartographers land their balloons on high places. If you manage to reach them, you can buy a map of the surrounding area.
  • Desert Punk: The game takes place in a variety of desert environments, from sand dunes to stone canyons to salt planes.
  • Diesel Punk: Several bike parts have this aesthetic, such as the tutorial-exclusive Sandcutter and the purchasable Beetle and Eyrie bike part sets you can get, which feature rumbling engine notes that sound very much like diesel engines (the Beetle Engine also features six exhausts that spew smoke when in motion, and the Eyrie Front End's power source heavily resembles a conventional V6 piston engine).
  • Everybody Did It: The "Heartbreak in the City" quest tasks you with figuring out who is responsible for sabotaging the city's power plant. As you investigate, you discover the three main suspects all have motive, but no concrete evidence that any one was responsible (and one has a solid alibi). You have to pick one of them, though you can suggest it was a group effort. In all likelihood, Machinist Hamza stole the power core, as his technical skill was required to remove it in such a way that it could easily be repaired. Merchant Iria ordered him to do it, as Hamza owed her a considerable sum of money. Finally, Climber Garay fenced the core. Picking the merchant is the most practical option from a gameplay standpoint, because the guards are too afraid to challenge her and do nothing in response.
  • The Faceless: Everyone. Masks are a universal part of life in Midden; even the camels wear them! It's eventually revealed that this is was a practice started by your ancestors when their ship crashed. The planet hadn't finished terraforming, so face masks were required to survive. It's unclear if the masks are still required, or if they're just continued as tradition.
  • Franken-vehicle: Bike parts can be mixed and matched at will, resulting in odd combinations like ancient engines mixed with beetle parts.
  • Gotta Catch Them All:
    • The main quest has you collecting various badges to unlock their corresponding masks. How many you collect leads into which ones you can choose from in the ending. Certain masks also affect sidequests.
    • You can also go hunting for cosmetic upgrades, or the 100+ Chum Eggs scattered throughout the world. The latter, once given to the Chum Queen, upgrade your stamina, and past 100 reward clothing.
    • An update in 2022 added a Fishing Minigame with a variety of species swimming in the sands across Midden, and a quest to collect every species of fish and bug to populate the newly-built Vivarium.
  • Guide Dang It!: Getting the Shade of Eccria mask is easily the most annoying quest in the game. You're told to follow symbols on the walls and that it will require a swim. After a false start in the canals, you'll be led into the lake outside, where there's a symbol on one of the rocks. Seems simple enough, but there's very little to go on once you get there, and it takes a bit of a leap to realize the mask is actually hidden in a cave between a different group of rocks on the shore.
  • Highly Visible Landmark: Almost all settlements and ruins are built in high places so they can be seen from far away. Individual NPCs out in the wild always have a campfire near them, which sends a column of smoke high up. Cartographers' balloons, which provide Crow's Nest Cartography, are always perched on one of the highest natural features they can find.
  • Home Sweet Home: One of Sable's possible choices at the end of the game: claiming the Ibex Mask and returning to her nomadic clan.
    "I will not be just Sable. I will be Ibexii. And I will be proud."
  • Hover Bike: Simoon is a hover-bike made of scavenged parts.
  • Infinity -1 Sword: The two unlockable ancient bike part sets, the Whale Ship Bike and Hicaric Ring Bike, have very good stats but are still inferior to a full set of Speedster parts (and depending on how persistent you are on acquiring cuts versus sidequesting, might be easier to obtain). The former has the highest top speed in the game at the cost of mediocre handling and acceleration, while the latter has the best handling and great acceleration in exchange for mediocre top speed.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The Speedster bike parts that can be purchased in Eccria have the best combined stat totals in the game, with full bars on Acceleration and Handling and the second-best Top Speed (losing only to the Whale Bike). This is balanced out by them being the most expensive parts in the game at 900 cuts collectively (for reference, most caches of cuts contain 20 with the rare large caches having 100).
  • Lost Technology: While the Machinists can salvage and repurpose some ancient technology, such as your Hover Bike, it's clear that the overall technological level has fallen considerably. Subverted somewhat in that the Machinists possess a potentially greater understanding of Hover Bike tech than any previous society; the Infinity +1 Sword bike parts are said to have been created by contemporary Machinists.
  • Low Culture, High Tech: Most of the people you meet seem to be nomads of some sort, living off the land and scavenging for parts. Despite this, they make frequent use of Hover Bikes, Magitech, and Humongous Mecha (until the latter broke down, anyway).
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The mask shrines. Unlike the metallic crashed spaceship ruins, these look like they're made from sandstone. They also behave more like magic than lost technology.
    • It's not quite clear who or what the Mask Casters are. Yes, they create masks. But, the process involves conjuring the same type of Perpetual energy the Temple of Rohana imbues your stone with, and Sable retrieves the mask from a portal where the Caster's *face* should be.
  • Negative Space Wedgie: The mystical force called "The Perpetual" that powers your Gliding Stone and some ancient technology is actually this, in the form of a sphere of energy around the whole planet that disrupts signals and technology. This caused the Whale and other Atomic ships to crash when they attempted to land for a terraforming effort, and blocked any attempts to call for help, resulting in the current human presence on the planet.
  • Not Quite Flight: Sable's glidestone allows her to slow her fall considerably, i.e. glide.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: You can fall from any height, and if you make no effort to soften your landing, Sable will reflexively activate her glidestone at the last second. There's an achievement for doing this from a certain height.
  • Platform Game: Some sections require you to navigate a 3D puzzle by climbing, jumping, and slow-falling your way around.
  • Plug 'n' Play Technology:
    • The different styles of bike parts are all compatible with each other. You can power a chugging, fumes-spewing Beetle Engine with the power plant in the starting Glider Front End (a glass cylinder containing an undefined glowy energy thing), or power the late-game, robotically articulated Speedster Engine with the powerplant in the Eyries Front End, which is a standard V6 piston engine mounted in a wooden boat frame.
    • In addition, the parts from the Whale Ship Bike given to you by Sarin for finding all six ship's logs and the Hicaric Ring bike constructed by Fir after finishing all six ring races are both hundreds of years old and totally compatible with both contemporary bike parts and each other despite the first being Atomic tech presumably designed on Earth and the latter being developed by ancient settlers and harnessing the energy of the Perpetual.
  • Power Glows: Most ancient ruins have visibly pulsing lights, making them easy to spot from a distance. Also applies to the power cells you can plug into different parts of the Atomic ships, changing the connecting lines from glowing red to green.
  • Precursors: Two different kinds, actually.
    • Firstly the Atomic era of precursors, whose technology is quite traditionally sci-fi, blending Everything Is An I Pod In The Future aesthetics with angular Standard Human Spaceship industrial technology. The modern inhabitants of the Midden know that the Atomics were the original settlers of the planet and that they came from the sky in the Whale and other ruined Atomic ships (but aren’t aware that they originally hailed from Earth and were part of a terraforming effort, or that there was human history before the Midden and there is presumably a human presence in other places in the galaxy).
    • Next is the Hicaric civilization which built all of the shrines and building ruins in the world and learned to harness the energy of the Perpetual in ways that cannot be properly replicated by current civilization. They use a much more mystical aesthetic with tile and stone construction and a tendency towards Spectacular Spinning and Power Floats in their technology.
  • Puzzle Platformer: The crashed spaceship ruins always feature some kind of Lock and Key Puzzle, wherein you have to place power cores in slots to unlock the door to the final room. The challenge is figuring out how get the cores to the slots, since Sable can't jump, climb, or glide while holding them, meaning any slot above the height of the core or across a gap is unreachable on foot. Various pistons and elevators serve as mediums to move the cores, with the correct sequence left to the player to figure out.
  • Rite of Passage: The Gliding is a tradition where a young adult is sent out alone into the world. They return when they've found a new mask to replace their childhood mask, symbolizing the future they've chosen for themselves.
  • Rule of Three: Three badges are required to earn a related mask, clothing comes in three parts (legs, torso, head), and the bike is made of three (interchangeable) parts.
  • Scavenged Punk: Much of the world's technology is built from recycled scrap scavenged from ancient ruins.
  • Scenery Porn: Just about every time you traverse the desert, you'll find some gorgeous new vista.
  • Sprint Meter: Sable has a diamond-shaped stamina meter which drains when running or climbing. With each batch of eggs you deliver to the Chum Queen, additional layers are added, which chiefly allows you to climb obstacles that are too tall for your basic stamina. The majority of the game is accessible with the basic stamina meter, if the player is extremely careful about stamina management, but if you intend to collect everything in the game, you'll need to collect most of the upgrades.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: The Hicaric shrines look like something you'd dig up in ancient Egypt, but contain mechanisms (or magic) seemingly more advanced than the enormous metallic Atomic ruins.
  • Sundial Waypoint: One of the mask shrines requires standing in the correct spot during a certain time of day.
  • Terraforming: The Whale and presumably the other Atomic shipwrecks found in the Midden are from a terraforming effort originating from Earth commissioned by the Atomic company. Their efforts to terraform the planet the game takes place on was complicated by the Perpetual—it disrupted their ships and caused them to crash, then blocked the crew's attempts to call for help. Left on their own without a livable planetary environment, the crew decided to turn on the damaged terraformers knowing that this would flood the new environment with radiation, forcing them and at least four subsequent generations to live in the shipwrecks and use protective gear to move between them so that some subsequent generation could have a livable environment. Apparently even that didn't entirely work, since the entire playable area is one or another form of desert with no indication given that a more hospitable region of the world exists. The people living in the Midden now are generations removed from the crash survivors, with a now-clean environment but having forgotten human history before the crash and with a cultural tradition of wearing masks likely originating in the radiation protection gear their ancestors wore.
  • Warp Whistle: You can fast travel to any major location on the map once you've visited it.
  • Weird Currency: Cuts, made out of small square pieces of spaceship hull-metal with a hole punched in the center so they can be bundled together on a rope.
  • Where It All Began: Sable's Gliding begins and ends in the Ewer, in the temple of Rohana.
  • Wide-Open Sandbox: After the prologue, you're sent out into Midden to acquire your own mask. You can immediately travel anywhere in the world and tackle quests in any order you choose (or just ignore them altogether).

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