Road 96 is one of my favourite games of the past few years, so when the developers at Digixart released their next game, Tides of Tomorrow, it was an easy buy for me.
Like R96, Tides is a single-player narrative game, except there’s a huge asterisk on the “single-player” part. Every part of this game is built to interact with asynchronous multiplayer systems. You might be alone in the game, but every scenario you encounter is influenced by the actions of the players who came before you, and every choice you make has consequences for those who come after you.
Tides of Tomorrow is set in a far future world ravaged by ecological disaster. The seas have risen to swallow the land, and worse still, the world is so choked with pollution that every living thing is slowly dying of plastemia, a disease that slowly turns the body into plastic. As with Road 96, it’s clear that the folks at Digixart believe that subtlety and subtext are for cowards (he said affectionately).
Like its predecessor, Tides mostly plays as a walking simulator with light survival mechanics. You’ll need a constant supply of ozen, a rare medicine, to manage your plastemia. Tides also spices up the formula a bit with occasional stealth, combat, and racing encounters, but these are all pretty simple and usually stress-free.
You play as a Tidewalker, a relic of a lost age. Connected to the “tides of time,” you have the ability to peer into the past and view the actions of other Tidewalkers, and it’s here that the asynchronous multiplayer aspect becomes apparent.
When you first start playing, you have to choose a player to follow. You can pick from a list of randomly selected options, choose a Steam friend to follow if any have played the game, or input a “seed” code that can be freely shared online. You could follow a favourite streamer or influencer (if anyone’s curious, my seed is 7154-9526). You also have the option to follow some curated playthroughs made by the developers if you want to play offline.
I was the first person on my Steam friend list to play, and I don’t keep up with any streamers these days, so I just selected some rando. You will likely change the person you’re following at least once while playing, in case you play faster than them or choose paths they didn’t. I’ve found myself following in the footsteps of luminaries like Bigasscrayon, MoonObscure, and Blackula-44.
As you play, you frequently have access to visions of the Tidewalker (player) who went before you. This can grant you greater insight into the story or provide hints on what to do next… or what not to do. You can also do emotes that will be seen by your followers, in case you want to show some love, point out secrets, or just bust a move.
Visions are far from the only way past and future Tidewalkers make their presence felt, though. This is very much a “choices matter” game, and your choices influence not only the future of your story but what your follower will encounter.
It would probably take multiple playthroughs to get a full understanding of just how much the choices of other players alter your experience, and I think people often have unrealistic expectations for the consequences in this kind of game (especially when we’re talking about a small team like Digixart), so it’s best to manage one’s hopes. My guess is that the main structure of the game is largely the same regardless, but the details change. I can say from the visions I’ve seen of my forebears, some of their scenes seem largely the same as mine with only minor tweaks, but others appear to have been quite dramatically different.
With so much being determined by the choices of not one but multiple players, the story can occasionally feel a little disjointed, but all things considered it’s impressive that’s not much more of a problem than it is.
It’s not just story choices that impact your followers, either. If you buy some ozen from a merchant, that merchant will be out of stock when the next player comes through, though you can forward some money to help the merchant restock faster. You can fix, or break, ladders and bridges, opening up or locking out some routes for those who come after. Most levels have a storage trunk where you can leave money or ozen for future players, or collect what others have left. You’ll also have occasional opportunities to compete against your forebears in races and the like.
It’s an interesting experience because it is still very much a single-player game, but you do get the sense of being part of a wider community. In a way it does remind me very much of how it feels to play an MMORPG solo. It’s that same “all alone together” feeling.
The immense web of interconnected choices should also make for some pretty robust replay value (also a strength of Road 96). I haven’t finished the game as of this writing, but I appear to be fairly close to the end, and I’m still well below 50% completion on encounters with every character. This is definitely going to take multiple playthroughs to see everything.
Outside of its asynchronous multiplayer gimmick, Tides of Tomorrow is a pretty solid narrative experience on its own merits. The writing has that same quirky, offbeat charm that Road 96 did. Eyla is one of the most fiercely lovable NPCs I’ve had the privilege to meet, and it’s been years since anything in a game left me feeling so gung-ho as my mission to save Kelpie the mereid. I CAME HERE TO RESCUE ANIMALS AND HUFF OZEN, AND I’M ALL OUT OF OZEN.
Overall, I think I liked Road 96 a bit better, but R96 feels like one of those special lightning in a bottle moments, so that’s not a particularly harsh indictment of Tides of Tomorrow. Like its predecessor, it’s definitely something I’d recommend to fans of story-driven games.
