Ed: Hello, everybody! This is Eddie V. from Boss Rush Network. I am here with Jason Loftus, who is the CEO, executive producer, and co-founder of Lofty Sky Games. Hello!

Jason: Hello!

Ed: I am here with Jason, demoing Sky of Tides. Jason? Can you explain what Sky of Tides is all about?

Jason: Sky of Tides is a sci-fi fantasy adventure RPG coming this fall. Think of it as a more upbeat Disco Elysium. So, it has your character progression, an element of RPG rather than the combat side of it.

Here’s a bit of a unique twist. You can see the world here, it’s a fractured and broken planet. The continents are hovering in space as separate planetoids. The oceans have risen, and there is a sphere of water surrounding all of it, which is where the name Sky of Tides comes from. So everything is very much upside down and out of balance.

So, as a result of that, the game rewards rather than min-maxing one character stat, it rewards if you’re able to achieve a level of balance. So, if you’re able to reach thresholds with each of your character stats, each of them is tied to one component of the ending of the game. There are 32 different combinations of endings you can get, but if you achieve balance and attain the true ending, you’ll unlock an animated series we made, which is inside the game. 

Ed: What inspired you to create this game? Were you reading books, watching movies, looking at dramas, or anything?

Jason: So the world concept came from a wonderful, Ukrainian-Canadian, creator named Lina Skorbach. So she’s originally from Ukraine, grew up in Canada, and speaks Japanese. She’s very fascinated by different cultures, and she also has an earth sciences degree. brought in this the the, you know, the physics, a unique setup of things here. But she was working on this, probably in terms of the world design, quite a long time before she brought it to us. So it really felt, when we heard the original pitch from her, like it was a real place that she was already living in. And so our writing team, the Pearman brothers, came in. They fell in love with this world.

They’re like, ”This is great! We can really do some amazing things here.” They created a wonderful cast of characters and storylines. At the same time, in addition to creative narrative games, we also produce film and television. We thought, ‘This would be a great world to explore from the side of an animated series as well.’

So we simultaneously made an animated series from the perspective of another character, and it was really great. I mean, sometimes with games, when a game takes off, someone will license it and make a movie or a fit, or like a series. For us, it’s the same team working on a series and a game at the same time. It’s great. The same writing team and the same creative leads are on the project.

We’re able to get ideas on one side and say, “Oh, this would be really good in the game,” or “this gives me an idea for the series.” This can allow you to explore the same world from different perspectives. So this was really something that, you know, just from the initial concept, got everybody really excited, and we just wanted to build something that I think other people enjoy as well.

Ed: Have there been any emotional moments for the team while developing it? Like, reading a part of the script and said, “we can’t wait to make this.” After making it, the team felt like, “Oh, this is a powerful moment.”

Jason: Yeah. So I think one of the things that really stands out to me is the real eclectic characters that you meet along the way. 

So you’re playing as Rin. She’s a teenage girl whose father is a research scientist. He’s gone missing in the radioactive bleach relics. Everyone tells you he’s dead. You believe you still have hope that he’s alive. And when a rebel girl who’s running from the authorities crashes into your research farm, that’s finally the impetus for you.

You’re like, “I’m gonna help protect this girl, and I’m gonna go find my dad.” You bring your robot companion, who is programmed by your dad, and he believes he’s your brother, and he wants to be your companion. He also becomes your UI for keeping track of all your character development as you go. He’s with you as you go along each stage of this journey, although you’re outwardly, and you’re trying to find your dad, you begin to find something about your own role in this unique world. So along the way, you’re going to meet a great cast of characters.

One of the things that stood out to me is that the cast is amazing. We have some wonderful, wonderful talent. There’s a list on the Sky of Tides website. You can check all the samples of the different voice casts. For example, Damien Haas, who’s doing a panel at Pax East, he’s the voice of Reap, who’s a robot companion.

Ginger Sue is our lead. The entire cast of characters is just wonderfully voiced, with very unique personalities. So right away, I feel that people can fall in love with many different characters in this series.

Ed: Is there a main antagonist in the game?

Jason: Yeah. I mean, without giving away too much, there are two opposing forces in this world. Okay. One of them is, and this is where elites come in, contributes to this whole idea of a very broken and fractured world. There are two very opposing visions for this broken planet.

One of them is the Syndicate Forces. They have a monopoly on this mineral called Koron, which they mine in a mysterious way that we don’t know at the outset. They use this to power all their technology and agriculture, which has allowed them to grow in power across all of the planetoids.

They’re kind of growing their reach. On the other side of it are the sovereign nations, and they believe that the answers to healing the world are through these lost traditions and the banned numantomes. These are things that you can encounter. They’re sort of mystical wisdom that is chanted by the acolytes into these crystal pages that you encounter along the way, and you have a Tarban spine.

You put it in there, and it will reveal the words. So you’re getting messages from different directions in this world, and you’re trying to find your place in all of that. So the sort of supreme power on the syndicate side is the chairman, and you will have direct interactions with her as you progress through the story, but also, meet a collective cast of characters on both sides of the story. 

Ed: Are you allowed to explore in the game? Can you find hidden places and other secrets?

Jason: So, an element of the game is that there is sort of semi-open world exploration in different environments. I think with a world that has a rich world design, that’s a wonderful feature to be able to dive in. Every item you find feeds into your character development. Pieces of those elements that you’re finding sort of dole out little pieces of this rich world. One of the things we found first is that when Nina had first designed the world and the setup of this whole space, it was so rich.

We want people to be able to discover it, not to just tell them about it constantly. Right? So I think that suits very well to the exploration and the ability to navigate as you’re going around. The other element of it is sort of like components of a visual novel, where you’re making dialogue choices as you go with characters that you’re interacting with. Those dialogue choices are feeding into your character development as well.

Ed: What kind of gameplay elements or ideas did you incorporate in Sky of Tides?

So you have five character stats. You have your courage, intelligence, compassion, luck, and humor. The whole idea with this world is you can’t just do one all the way down. You can try. You can pursue it that way. If you’re able to make decisions that end up feeding all of those character stats, then you’re gonna be able to achieve the sort of ideal ending of the game.  Each of those stats ties to one major outcome in the story. Right? So, yeah, that’s a basic idea. Yeah, I think there’s also character customization that comes into play.

So you’ll have to unlock different suits, which is, you know, it’s fun to customize your character.  At the same time, those suits will tie into your character and your stats development as well. So there’s sort of like a meta layer to the game where you’re kind of working on that element of it. I think first and foremost, it’s about diving into this world. We want a place where people can escape.

They can lose themselves in this space and have it be really rich and engaging. That’s what we’re going for. 

Ed: How about the music? What kind of style or genre do you guys have for the music? 

I think we wanted something evocative of the sci-fi place that we’re in, but also the fact that there are these kinds of desert-type wastelands when we’re in the Bleach Relic. So there’s an exotic feel where you’re somewhere far and unfamiliar. Of course, at the same time, we don’t want it to sound too much like something specific from this world. We want it to feel a little bit otherworldly. So credit to Mark and Miles Rogers.

They were our duo, a father-son team of music and sound guys who did an amazing job. It’s all an original soundtrack for this game. I think it really gives you the feeling of this unknown space. So definitely futuristic, definitely sci-fi, but it’s got its own unique kind of flavor and taste as well. 

Ed: Are there music beats to capture emotional moments in the game?

Jason: So there are, yes. As you’re progressing through the game, there are sorts of themes that tie to different places along your journey. That’s how I would say that. Mark and Miles did a great job of really capturing the progression in this story.  I don’t want to give away too much about what those major moments away. I would say that this is a story that is something where people can kind of, relax as they’re inside of it. It’s not something that hits you hard in the face as you get going, but it progresses and gets richer and richer as you go. 

Ed: How has the response been? How has that made you feel when you interact or observe people playing the demo?

Jason: Encouraging! It’s the third day here at PAX East, and we have a thirty-minute demo.  Most people are playing all the way through. So people will line up, and then they’ll be like, “I gotta go. I’ll come back later” because people don’t give up the machine, and we love that! It means people are really interested and into it. We did intentionally leave a longer demo on the floor because this is all about the world and the story and getting people into it. So that’s very encouraging. We want players to meet new characters and find these new twists, and I think the best stuff is the further you go, the better it gets.

Ed: Are you surprised when people hear RPG that the first thing they think of now is “does it have new game plus?” I have to ask, will the game have new game plus? Do you start over completely fresh? 

Jason: There are save slots along the way, so people can go back and try different things as they progress. We wanted to accomplish a lot of things.  First of all, as an indie studio, there’s always the factor of time and budget. We want to create a lot of content. Right? We don’t want to lose sight of a cohesive vision, either. Right? We want to create agency for the player.

So where’s that balance? Right? What we want to do is to be able to have responses that are unique and original and surprising and engaging as you’re going. So that when people are making even individual dialogue choices, the responses they get are enjoyable to them.

At the end of the game, you want people to feel that the choices they made along the way are really representing an element of their own character in this as well. They want to feel that it is tailored towards them.  No matter how they end up, of course, it would be amazing if you get the true ending and you get everything perfect.

But even if not, it’s a rewarding completion as well. So we hope that people engage in the world and they want to replay it. Also, to explore the other endings and the other possibilities and the other reactions they get along the way, they will have to start fresh from the beginning. 

We built out both the game and the animated series because we just feel there’s something really unique and rich here in the world, and we would love to return to it, you know, build an audience and come back to it for future seasons on the game side as well.

Ed: I’m assuming that it has some deep lore, you know, even though it’s about Rina trying to find her dad.  There are things around the world that you don’t know as a player. Is that something the team thought about?

Jason: 100%. I think the lore is so deep and rich, and that’s part of what I was getting at through exploration. We don’t want people to feel that they’re being lectured about something, even if it’s really fascinating. It’s so much better when it comes through discovery. So that’s where the dialogue comes from, through the twists and turns in the story, but also through all the different things that you find along the way.

One element is learning about this sort of mysterious path of this world, which is partially exploded, hanging by a thread, and learning what the ancient wisdom and philosophy of this world were. As you uncover these, lost numantones, you have a device that’s able to read them. You find these crystal pages. It looks just like a regular piece of crystal, but they’re kind of smooth, and you put it in, and then these teachings from the ancient acolytes appear. They were chanting into the crystal, and now you can hear them.

This gives you a totally different lens on what the mindset of these people was in the past, and that may actually lead to you uncovering your own role in this world as well. 

Ed: Which is fascinating because lore videos have, in the past few years, even with the release of Destiny, it’s become so interesting because people see it as a documentary, and they’re learning about the world of that game. Is that something that we may see in the future? Would that be something you would like to see?

Jason: Would love that. I think that’s something we’re passionate about exploring it because there’s so much there. This is something that we learn because we also make films. One of the things you learn in storytelling is that you build so much behind the scenes so that what you put on the screen is cohesive, but you don’t overwhelm people with what’s on screen.

You always want there to be so much more in the backstory that you have figured out. It’s all there, but you’re very cautious not to overwhelm people with stuff. Right? So they can keep pulling, and they see, “Oh, wow. There’s a lot here.”

This has been thought about very deeply. That’s the feeling you want the audience to have. You just want to have a lot of that fleshed out behind the scenes. One of the ways we’ve done this is, I mentioned, by exploring through the TV series as well as through the animated series as well as the game. But there’s another component. We did an audiobook of back stories for all the main characters. 

Ed: Oh, nice!

Jason: Those are voiced by the talent from the game. So people who go to the website, Sky Tides, can sign up and they’ll get them in their newsletter. Just once a week, they’ll get another audiobook for free.

We’re releasing those soon as well, as a series of stories on Wattpad with comic images as well. So people can get into the origin story. This is an opportunity for us, without overwhelming people and going in 15 different directions right at the beginning of the game, they can see some of the really fascinating character development. When you’re going through the world, you won’t need that to understand what’s going on but when you engage with these characters, you’re like, wow, that guy’s so interesting and so unique or she’s so fascinating.

Then you can go back and learn their origin story and say, “woah, that’s where that comes from?” That makes it adds a richness and a depth to their experience!

Ed: How is the team feeling at this moment? Are they nervous about the release date? Are they ready to celebrate after the game comes out? 

Jason: That’s a great question. I think definitely sort of all of the above. You know, you put a lot of heart into something.

You work at it for a few years. You do that because you want to share something with somebody. Right? We want to share this with an audience. We created something that we’re passionate about.

We’ve put our own love into it. We want people to connect with it. The anxiety part of it is, we’re always you’re anxious about how people are going to see our work, but we are very encouraged by the response we’ve got because we’ve had the opportunity now through exhibiting it, whether it’s GDC, GameCom, or now here at PAX. You meet so many audience members who are really getting into it.

You know, people who play the demo for thirty minutes, have wishlist it on the spot with the QR code we have. Like, that’s great. They’re really engaged when we’re talking about the IP. So that’s is super encouraging. We just can’t wait to share it with people who’ve shown so much passion and interest in it already.

Ed: Is it just planned for PC right now? 

Jason: Yes. So we are PC developers first and foremost.

We are developing ourselves for PC. At the same time, we’ve got a wonderful publishing partner, ES Digital. They’re based in Europe, and they are handling, basically, winding that out for everybody. So they’re doing localization to, I think, a dozen languages. Hopefully, they’ll optimize a version for Steam Deck.

We have it here running on the Steam Deck, but we haven’t actually, you know, ported all the controls and optimized for Steam Deck yet. So people can try it out. It will definitely be working smoothly, you know, at release. They’re also bringing it to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox. We’re also planning for retail. So there will be physical box sets people can get.

Ed: Yay!

Jason: The box sets will have the game as well as the animated series. Perhaps also the audio series will be included in that as well. So that’s sort of a collector’s thing. So all of that is coming.

They’ll be doing an announcement about the release schedule at Gamescom in August. We’re looking forward to it being available later this year. Yeah. 

Ed: So I just have two more questions for you. 

Jason: Sure.

Ed: The first question that I’m asking: I’ve been writing an article about games that have earned their stripes. Is there a particular game or franchise you feel has earned its stripes? It could be any game, any franchise, indie, triple-A, whatever. What game do you think has earned its stripes?

Jason: I’m one of those guys who doesn’t normally put out my favorite all-time list. I usually revolve around the things that I’ve been playing most recently. Right?  I play almost exclusively sort of indie titles and PC games. So I’m not normally mentioning the triple-A things.

A couple of things that I’ve been playing recently. I mean, Mine Pop has been something that is a game in the mystery genre. We’re planning to make something in the mystery genre coming up as well. I’ve really been intrigued by that title. I think it’s a creative game. I love to give a shout-out to indie devs who make something that I think is quite unique, but also maybe didn’t get the commercial breakthrough.

It got great reviews, but you can see the numbers are not enormous. So I love to sort of highlight those hidden gems. And I think that’s the kind of mindset I have. It’s also a lot of what I see with the people coming around the floor at PAX East. Like, obviously, these are people who are passionate. They’re coming to see games before they’re finished.

They’re coming to connect directly with developers, and those are the types of people who are resonating with what we’re making. So I kind of return that as well and show some love to indie devs who I think are doing a great job.

Ed: And my final question, what is your go-to snack? Whether you’re helping the team, whether you’re relaxing on the weekend, or maybe you might feel a little bit anxious. You’re like, “I got to have this snack to calm me down.” What is that snack? 

Jason: Yeah. So I’m very excited!

My wife is from Northeast China. Our boys love snacks and, funny enough, they always like, around the house. We’ve got a lot of Asian snacks. It’s not something I grew up on, but shrimp chips and sunflower seeds, and snacks of this kind. So these are the things that are kicking around the house, and I find myself usually mixed in on one of that sort if it’s around me. So that’s my go-to.

Ed: Is there anything you would like to say to the readers who are finding out about you all for the first time?

Jason: We’re a small team, and everyone here is wearing lots of hats. A lot of passionate, capable individuals who I’m really proud to have on our team. 

Ed: There are three developers here presenting games from Interactive Ontario and Indie Angels. Can you tell us a little about them?

Jason: We were chosen to be part of a cohort here. These are three studios here from Ontario, Canada. We’re so thankful for the support from Interactive Ontario.

There’s a great team at Indie Angels who’s been doing amazing publicity support for the three studios that are here. I know we get support through Ontario Creates, which is sort of the provincial, you know, engine, from the provincial government to support the creators in Ontario. So we’ve got a wonderful ecosystem in Ontario and in Canada. We’ve got the support for our project from the Canada Media Fund from Ontario Creates. So they’ve been wonderful in helping to nurture and develop emerging producers of interactive content. We appreciate it very much. 

Ed: Thank you, Jason, for this interview. Go Wishlist Sky of Tides from Lofty Sky Games. Check it out and keep up with them. Follow them. Support them. Download the demo on Steam.

Jason: The game is going to be released sometime later this year. So keep an eye out. Good day, everybody.

Featured Image: Lofty Sky Games

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