Tides of Tomorrow has lush blue oceans dotted with bright colors, and a bopping soundtrack that puts you in a good mood. It's beautiful, and not what you'd expect from an apocalyptic tale. But, look a little closer. All those bright colors floating in the water and embedded in people's skin is actually plastic. Just like bright colors in nature, this distinctly unnatural, man-made phenomenon is deadly, and with a population count that begins at about 260,000 and ticks down chapter by chapter, this microplastics plague may truly be the end of days.
How bad it gets isn't just up to you, but Tides of Tomorrow's player-base as a whole. Dubbed a Tidewalker, you're one of many amnesiac protagonists comatose beneath the planet's flooded waves, who are now awakening as walking, talking signs of a prophesized final days. Tides of Tomorrow is still your story with its own plot beats and ending, but the choices of those around you affect the situations you'll come up against – from whether a bridge has collapsed from player overuse and needs repair, to if a whole market island is in military lockdown. Coming from developer Digixart, who also made the fantastically dystopian choice-driven Road 96, Tides of Tomorrow feels like an evolution of the studio's own take on what branching narratives should be like.
