Tides Of Tomorrow, the aquatic adventure where you deal with your friends’ cock-ups, gets a release date

If you missed its appearance last year, Tides Of Tomorrow is a choice-driven adventure game set in a brighter version of Waterworld, and is being made by the team behind road trip adventure Road 96. Last night it was shown off again during the PlayStation State of Play, and this time the studio has stuck their post-apocalyptic harpoons into a release date.

It’s coming out February 24th next year. The ocean-exploring game is set on a flooded earth on which “deadly plastification threatens to kill all living things”. It mostly looks like an adventure of gathering resources, meeting strange new folk, and possibly killing them.

The catch is that you’re always following in the wake of another player, whose own choices colour how people will react to you. In the trailer above we see Souls-esque phantoms of other adventurers affecting the player’s world. They might have taken some loot you wanted, or maybe they threw a dude into the toxic water and now you’ve got to deal with the poor sick fella afterwards. It’s basically a “choices matter” game, but someone else is doing the choosing. That said, other players may also be following you.

“Each person who plays is recorded, their choices are saved, and you can follow them along your journey! A friend? A streamer? The choice is yours!” say developers Digixart. “You will feel the impact from the consequences of the one you follow and must deal with them! It’s up to you to cooperate… or to make some waves!”

Okay, calm down please, marketing copy. No need for all those exclams. Anyway, there were a lot of choices to make in Road 96 too, the previous singleplayer game by Digixart. It was well-liked by Alice B (RPS in peace). “This political road trip is rendered an exciting and entertaining time by its cast and the deliberately piecemeal nature of its storytelling, rather than the story itself,” she said in her review.