Navigating the Climate Crisis: Ghost Gamers Guide the Tides of Tomorrow | Games

aBlue skies, crystal clear waters and a fleet of boats bearing the words “Welcome to Pleasureland” – it sounds like a dream vacation, but in reality it’s a dystopia: after a great flood, the continent is submerged and diseases caused by toxic plastic are affecting all living things.

Tides of Tomorrow is nothing less than unsettling climax fiction, but its tone is lighthearted, blunt and irreverent rather than gloomy and unsettling. It’s set on the fictional planet Elynd, and lead game designer Adrien Poncet says he and his colleagues had free reign to play with the science and technology they depicted. At one point, a character inhales “ozen” from a container, an oxygen-like substance that helps keep people alive. At other times, players witness shocking and unsettling imagery, including tons of floating plastic that resemble the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Fans of DigixArt’s previous project, the border-crossing adventure Road 96, will be pleased with the amount of challenge in Tides of Tomorrow’s gameplay. Players will navigate the oceans of Erind, encountering pirates, religious cults, and deep-sea trawlers loaded with junk, sprinkling in first-person exploration, mini-games, and scripted action sequences (including, predictably, a boat-driving sequence and, unexpectedly, the odd bit of parkour). But Poncet stresses that at its core, the game is a thrilling, branching narrative. Kill a crime boss or attempt an escape? The choice is yours. You may live or die by the consequences.

It’s a new and particularly ambitious twist on this long-running “choose your own adventure” formula. Playing as a so-called Tide Walker (name subject to change), you share what Poncet calls a “strange connection” with other Tide Walkers. They appear to you as apparitions, out of time but not out of place. The catch here is that these apparitions aren’t pre-programmed encounters, but other players connected to you over the internet, already playing out the same events. Think of it as an asynchronous multiplayer system, like Elden Ring’s ghosts, except here your ghosts have a tangible impact on the game, perhaps leaving behind important items like a knife to stab the aforementioned unsuspecting kingpin.

You’ll follow in the footsteps of one player at a time, getting to know them through their decision-making impulses. Who is that player? “It could be a stranger on the internet, a friend, or even your favorite streamer,” says Poncet.

Soon, a chain reaction of decisions made by both you and your bound partner begins to pile up. Testing a game with such a dizzying narrative structure proves to be extremely difficult.[Tides of Tomorrow] “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the first game to really push the idea of ​​asynchronous multiplayer narrative,” Ponsetto said. “We didn’t approach this game with any blueprint or preconceived ideas. This is uncharted territory.”

Despite the novelty of this component, the lead designer claims that it speaks to the game’s deeper themes. Indeed, the mechanic doubles as a carefully considered metaphor: after all, what could survive the all-encompassing climate crisis and mitigate its worst effects other than a massive collaborative effort involving people spread across a vast continent?

“Tides of Tomorrow asks players to question our world,” Poncet says, “but especially about holding on to hope in a world where all seems lost, and helping each other in a common effort to make things better.”