If you’re wondering how long Sable is, we’ve got the length, and time to beat, right here. Sable is the debut game from indie studio Shedworks, and it sees players guiding the titular Sable through her Gliding – a rite of passage in Sable’s world where a young person leaves their village to explore the world on a hoverbike and gathers masks to eventually choose a mask to wear for the rest of their life. You’ll be coasting your way across a vast desert landscape on your little hoverbike to explore every nook and cranny of the map, looking for people to speak to, quests to complete, and puzzles to solve. No matter how long it takes you, just relax and enjoy the ride.
How long does it take to beat Sable?
Due to its open-world nature and the absence of a critical story path, Sable can be completed either quite quickly or can be a real time sink. A quick playthrough could last 6-8 hours, but a more thorough playthrough for a completionist will likely last double that, if not more. Be aware that some light spoilers for Sable’s endgame are mentioned below.
The goal of Sable is to collect special masks that represent a particular occupation, society, or creed in the world as part of Sable’s Gliding. Completing quests and exploring will allow you to find masks or badges needed for casting a mask. Once you’ve cast your first mask, you can end the game pretty much immediately. You’ll be invited home to end Sable’s Gliding in a ceremony, but you can put this off for as long as you like. There are lots of different types of masks and so many places to explore on the map, so you can easily spend far more time playing the game.
We managed to complete Sable in 7 hours, which included gathering four masks, completing 16 quests, and a fair bit of exploring in between. However, there was still a lot left to uncover, with untouched regions of the map and plenty of incomplete quests. It’s worth pointing out that after you end Sable, you can reload your save and it will put you back to just before you make the decision to end the game so you can continue exploring as if nothing happened.
Sable is a game about going on a literal journey self-discovery, and you have almost complete control over when that journey is over. If you feel satisfied with what you have played – even if it’s only a few hours – and have cast a mask that you particularly like early on, you can go and end the game by choosing that mask. If you want to keep going to find all the masks available and uncover more secrets about the world, there’s no rush and you can tackle that at your own pace too.
