A bridge destroyed by your predecessor and repaired by you could give your successor an easy route out of town. A skittish Grunt, aided rather than assaulted, could open the door to a safe escape. Offer up a kind donation to a less fortunate soul, and they might just know how to hide you when the plastic hits the fan. In Tides of Tomorrow, your actions, in a flooded world overwhelmed by the reckoning of excessive plastic pollution, can have far-reaching consequences.
Through Tides of Tomorrow’s intricate Online Story-Link feature, these actions; be they lawfully good, for the greater good, or for the good of nobody but yourself, can be seen by anyone and everyone. They affect anyone and everyone. You chart a path and leave a mark – a mark that any subsequent Tidewalker can follow wholeheartedly, work to put right, or twist to suit their own desires. Walk this waterlogged world, and just as you’ll hear stories of your predecessor’s exploits, whoever decides to walk a mile in your shoes will hear of your own. They can choose to do things differently or ride in your wake, trusting that you fought just as they would.
Once plucked from the plastic-polluted seas by Nahe, another Tidewalker, the crux of your journey is made clear: you’re sick. Deathly ill. The fallout of overconsumption and consumerism has taken its toll not just on the planet’s vast water reserves, but your mortal body, too. And you’re far from the only one. Tortured by unrelenting attacks of Plastemia on your organs, Nahe has the answer: you need Ozen – a landmark medicine capable of subduing your affliction. For a time, at least. But you’re far from the only one succumbing to the man-made blight ravaging the populace. And there’s barely enough Ozen to go around. The solution? Well, there’s more than two ways to go about it.
Tides of Tomorrow is a solemn tale and a deeply human story set among the sea, on the remains of a bright and still-bustling flotilla archipelago. Teetering on the brink of total environmental collapse and a dwindling population, this world still clings to what made it so alive in the first place: its people.
Though those infected with Plastemia threaten to leave a corpse both beautiful and horrific along its sodden, suspended streets as time runs dry, many still choose to live life vicariously; partying like there’s no tomorrow – in the real case that there isn’t – in the bass-blasting neon-lit clubs of Marketland. Others turn to a more old-fashioned form of desperate entertainment: attempting to turn their fortunes around with a well-placed bet on a Pleasureland boat race. Set atop heavy-hitting and mesmerizing mixes of EDM, trance, electro, and grunge, Tides of Tomorrow still manages to paint a powerfully poignant picture of Earth’s own impending environmental collapse despite a thumping tracklist you can’t help but nod along to.
There’s no undoing damage of this scale. For now, there’s only survival. And turning the tide is not as simple as seeking out a single canister. The Ozen crisis is another man-made machination – a miracle medicine hoarded by Obin, a baron with henchmen wrapped around his fingers and the polluted population beneath his boots, willing to do anything to see another sunrise. But you’re no good dead. You need that Ozen as much as anyone. With the world resting on your shoulders, dare you say even more so?
Blessed with the power to see the actions of the previous Tidewalker you trail, every step you take – and, quite literally, every breath you take – is at the whim of those who came before you. Align yourself with a like-minded individual and follow in their footsteps, or deign to right the wrongs of a self-centered ancestor with a heartfelt sacrifice. How you choose to salvage what you need – and what you do with any surplus supplies – can make or break the fragile world you find yourself in, or force the next Tidewalker down a totally different path.
No matter your choices, fate soon brings you to Eyla: a trusted confidant of Nahe’s, and as free-spirited as they come. She’s just like you: dependent on Ozen, yet immovable in her desire to make a difference.
Eyla knows the alleys like the back of her soon-to-be plastic hands. And with her street smarts, she’s sure of her plan to liberate the megalomaniac merchant Ozen reserves to keep the Plastemia population going long enough to find a cure. Alongside Kass, a character with a strategic connection to the man in the high castle, the delightful duo makes up a small portion of the Reclaimers: a faction heaven-bent on prying power from his Marauders. To bring destiny back into the hands of the many, not the few. Just keep a close eye on the Mystics. They’re… stuck in the past.
Between key missions to liberate the Plastemia pandemic, you’re free to scout out the seas, where you’re sure to have chance encounters with even more enigmatic and eccentric characters roaming the deep blue of their own free will. Either way, each trip you take around the archipelago, whether to bargain with Obin’s network of shady souls or raid his reserves, takes time. And time is Ozen. Go off the beaten path, and you might just score some surplus supplies; scraps from a fishing vessel carelessly dredging up what little life is left beneath the tainted waves, or a present from an eccentric self-proclaimed ruler of a land localized entirely within his own tiny boat. Take them on, or recruit them to your cause. Where their acts sit on your moral compass is for you to decide. Everybody has a price.
Tides of Tomorrow is a branching narrative that’s never set in stone. One where even the smallest decisions can have the most far-reaching consequences. The decision to smash and grab an Ozen hoard could mean a powerful figure has none left to appease the desperate masses. Even a handout to an unhoused individual, a necessary purchase of a merchant’s final shipment, or the simple act of using your Scrap to repair a rusty old ladder can all send your follower down a very different path. Chaos theory is very much a thing at the end of the world. The opening of Pandora’s box. Your decision to bet big on a race or swipe a soul’s last bit of Scrap could be the single flutter of a butterfly’s wing that changes the course of history.
Moving beyond the ramifications of your own choices, you’re left to battle against those of your predecessors, too, wrestling with how a moral compass can distort, erode, or stay steadfast as you come to terms with a world that might just be too far gone to fix. From the same team behind 2021’s breakout dusty roadtrip riot ‘Road 96 ’, DigixArt’s latest represents the evolution of stellar community-focused storytelling five years in the making. In a world that reflects real-world scars like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s a heartbreaking, eloquent, and wholly believable action-packed fantasy depiction of the kind of future that could just become our reality. And with a demo still ready to set sail, you can carve your own path with no commitment.
