One of the more interesting State of Play announcements from yesterday's show was the new asynchronous multiplayer game Tides of Tomorrow from the developers of Road 96 at DigixArt. Except this time around instead of traversing the roads you'll be taking to the seas.
In a post on the PlayStation Blog, the game's director, Adrien Poncet, explains where the idea came from, and it's actually far simpler than you'd think. "Our game, Road 96, was a procedural road trip where you'd go on multiple runs with different characters, one after the other. After it launched, some team members joked, 'We should make Road 96 but with boats! Boat 96!'"
Poncet adds, "But then a more serious idea sparked: what if each of those runs in Road 96 were actually played by different people, and their choices impacted each other – and the world?"
Which leads to Tides of Tomorrow's core idea of "what if we used multiplayer elements to shape the narrative itself?" Other asynchronous multiplayer games like Death Stranding have ways that players can interact with each other, like building a bridge or leaving a ladder somewhere. But for Tides of Tomorrow, the developers have made the story itself multiplayer.
When starting the game, you pick a player to follow through the narrative, in which you wake up with no memories infected with a microplastic disease that will eventually turn you into macroplastic if you don't cure it. In a manner similar to the death ghosts in Dark Souls, you'll be able to see what choices, routes, and traps the player came across, allowing you to adapt your story.
However, in a more interesting twist, NPC's will react to what previous players did. The example used is "if a player stole something valuable from an important NPC, that character might now hate all Tidewalkers, forcing you to sneak around instead of being welcomed." I never played Road 96, but this concept alone is fascinating, and definitely has put the studio on my radar when it releases the game on February 24, 2026.
