Tides of Tomorrow Has a Demo, and it Gives Hope For Steam Deck Players

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Adventure game Tides of Tomorrow is still a little way off its release date in February next year, but we've already been treated to a demo. The makers of Road 96 are back with a title exploring a world facing ecological disaster. Will you find your way through?

Tides of Tomorrow (Demo) - Gameplay Impressions

Tides of Tomorrow is a first-person narrative adventure with a unique proposition. What if someone had already played through before you, and their actions affect your story? At the beginning of the game, you are asked to pick a player to follow in the footsteps of, either a random person, a friend, or even your favorite streamer.

The system actually works well in the demo, with other players leaving supplies (or not) for you, and at the end of the story sequence you play through, it shows you possible other scenarios that you may have encountered depending on the actions of the player you followed, and what effect your actions will have on anyone who chooses to follow you.

This looks like a decent way to add replayability to what is typically a one-and-done genre, and hopefully the final release pushes this system throughout the game to create some interesting scenarios.

As for how the demo feels. It's pretty polished, as you would hope. There are various paths that you can take, depending on who you're following, and it definitely feels like there are plenty of branching narratives that can change the game quite significantly. It's only a short demo of about 20 minutes, but it's well worth the time if you're interested.

Tides of Tomorrow (Demo) - Steam Deck Performance

As for how the Tides of Tomorrow demo runs on the Steam Deck. Well, the controls work well, and the game does support 1280x800 as a resolution, so no black borders.

Performance, however, is a mixed bag. Some parts of the game have no trouble running at a decent framerate, when on the boat, which admittedly is a small part of the demo, the game runs around 40-50 FPS. Once you reach the Reclaimer's town, the frame rate can drop to the mid-20s, even on the lowest graphical settings, although for the most part, you can play at 30 FPS. But there's one key point: the game has no upscaling options (yet).

Hopefully, we could see something like FSR3 introduced for the full release, and that could greatly improve performance. The game still looks decent on the lowest settings in the demo, so some upscaling wouldn't ruin picture quality, and could give us the few extra FPS we need for a stable 30 FPS experience.

Power draw is really high throughout, though, and the Steam Deck's fan did ramp up, so we may have to curb expectations on battery life with this one.

Final Thoughts

Tides of Tomorrow holds a really interesting premise, and if it's used well in the full release, it could be a very intriguing adventure title.

Steam Deck performance is mixed for now, but if FSR3 (or even XeSS) is added, I think we could definitely see the game being playable on the Steam Deck when it launches next year.

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