Sky of Tides Preview – Preview
Sky of Tides, developed by Lofty Sky Entertainment, was being shown at Summer Game Fest. A beautiful mix of interactive animation and Disco Elysium-styled narrative adventure, it’s looking to be an incoming sleeper for 2025–fully voice acted with a presentation that is set to wow.
Initially, the game poses as an unassuming story-focused adventure, boasting an Isometric view with crisp, clean animations. Under the surface, however, is a full multimedia experience that can inspire future generations of gamers to come. The team at Lofty Sky are mostly female, and aspire to create characters that would’ve inspired themselves as children. The main character Rin follows that template, as she is slowly trying to find a balance amongst her people as a leader, and bringing the shattered world back together before war breaks out.
The developers have called the game an “anti-RPG” in that most narrative RPGs create dialogue choices that explore multiple personality types and outcomes. Sky of Tides, on the other hand, strives for something different. You can still play on those archetypes, but the goal here is to maintain a balance between the five different personality traits in order to create harmony amongst your people. It’s an interesting concept that may polarize the audience but it’s definitely a change of pace for the genre.
One thing that was presented to me was how the experience of Sky of Tides features a variety of multimedia forms. Once you’ve completed its fully voice acted campaign and received the main ending out of the 32 possible, you are treated to a five-episode cartoon series. This series delves further into the narrative of the story, but from a different point of view, giving more context for Rin’s actions and behavior. This video series contains up to 45 minutes of content and adds an additional layer to the game as a whole. The devs were mum on whether this content will be released somewhere else at a later date but it’s a premise that had me excited to jump into the world of Numen. Keep this one on your radar, especially if you love game mechanics akin to Disco Elysium.
