It’s often said that one person can’t change the world alone, but in Tides of Tomorrow the actions of others truly shape your story just as much as your own decisions do.
The latest title from DigixArt – the studio behind the brilliant Road 96 – takes the same storytelling-rich core that made that series such a hit and pushes it into even stranger and more ambitious waters.
Endless Tide
Set on the flooded world of Elynd, society has been left clinging to survival on scattered floating settlements after environmental collapse turned the planet into an endless ocean. Think Waterworld, but less shite.
To make matters worse, a horrifying disease called Plastemia is slowly turning people into plastic statues.
Read More: Road 96: Mile 0 review – Lost Highway
You play as a Tidewalker, an amnesiac survivor searching for answers and a cure, while trying to navigate a world filled with desperate factions, broken communities and people hanging on to hope by the thinnest thread.
Seafaring
Like Road 96 before it, Tides of Tomorrow is very much a game about the journey. The plot slowly unfolds over time as you sail between settlements, meeting new characters and uncovering the secrets behind the world’s downfall.
From smugglers and scavengers to religious cults and ruthless raiders, nearly everyone you meet feels like they have their own motivations, but more often than not, scars. The writing does a solid job of making these people feel believable, even when the world itself feels lost.
Asynchronous Multiplayer
The big twist here though is the asynchronous multiplayer system. Before starting the game, you choose another player’s “story link” to follow.
This means their choices can directly impact your tale. Maybe they stole supplies from a town, destroyed a bridge or angered an important NPC. Whatever they did leaves consequences for you to clean up or deal with.
Read More: Mixtape review – Vibes-Based Mixing
It also lets you see, through sort of flashbacks, how their choices went. Have to get into an area but the door is locked? Watch a flashback and see what not to do, as your friend from the past made a right mess of it.
It creates a very strange feeling that, though you are playing your own game, you’re never fully alone. Your choices echo through other people’s games.
Walking and Choosing Sim
Gameplay sticks fairly close to the walking-sim style DigixArt is known for, with exploration, dialogue choices taking centre stage over combat.
Travelling by boat between locations adds a nice sense of scale to the world, while scavenging for medicine and supplies becomes increasingly tense as resources grow scarce.
Some Gameplay
There are a few very light action moments and puzzles scattered throughout, but the focus is always on tale, narrative choice and ultimately consequence.
Visually the game absolutely shines. Elynd is both beautiful and unsettling, with bright neon oceans filled with plastic waste and collapsing structures built from humanity’s leftovers and hopes.
The soundtrack is equally impressive, blending chill electronic beats with melancholic ambient tracks. The game’s tracks perfectly match the lonely feeling of the world.
Tides of Tomorrow is an emotional, creative and surprisingly clever evolution of the ideas introduced in Road 96. It’s a game with a strong heart at its core about survival, climate change/collapse and human connection. But, more importantly it shows that even the smallest actions you do can ripple outward and affect others far beyond us.
- Tides of Tomorrow review – King Tide
- Mixtape review – Vibes-Based Mixing
- Pragmata review – No Escort Mission
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