Old Skies review

Time travel is perhaps the most deliciously compelling of all the sci-fi conceits because it taps into something so incredibly human and primal that we're all burdened with: regret. By turning back the clock, we can fix all of our mistakes. A better version of our lives is just one time jump away—at least in Wadjet Eye's brilliant new adventure game, Old Skies.

Not for Fia Quinn, though. A ChronoZen agent in 2060s New York, she serves as guide, bodyguard and fixer for tourists with enough money to book some time in the past. In this tantalisingly close future, she gets to watch people make their time tweaks, and all the changes they create just wash over her.

See, like her fellow ChronoZen agents—and important historical events, people and even buildings—Fia's chronolocked. This means she's unaltered by the constant changes to the timeline—even her personal timeline. One moment, she might have a spouse and a child who she's never technically met before, the next she's a free-spirited party girl. But from her perspective, she's always the same Fia—immutable, diligent, lonely and dedicated entirely to the job.

As we enter Fia's life, she's an experienced, busy agent helping her clients fix their present by exploring the past. It's a job that tends to come with complications. Sometimes clients go rogue. Simple missions might get tangled up in elaborate mysteries. And then there's the risk of getting shot in the head—something that happens repeatedly. It's a good thing her handler, Nozzo, always has a finger hovering over that rewind button.

Old Skies' conundrums are not the sort of thing that'll lead to your own head wounds, as you smash your face against the keyboard. Indeed, most of the time they're pretty simple—at least compared to the ridiculous leaps that so many other point and clicks expect you to make. Logic and common sense will keep you moving forward at a good clip, most of the time. But the puzzles are also frequently tactile and playful, and crucially they don't forget that you're a time traveller.

Sometimes that means you can resolve obstacles simply by searching the historical record. Other times, it means you'll need to hop between two different time periods, making changes in the past to solve problems at a later date. One of my favourites sees you trying to save your own life in 30 minutes by creating a life-saving drug that doesn't exist yet, using ingredients that have ceased to exist.

I took a few notes here and there, but mostly because middle age has stolen my ability to remember things for more than a minute. Like most Wadjet Eye games, especially those created by Dave Gilbert, the puzzles are fun rather than challenging. But the end result is largely the same: I always feel incredibly satisfied. I might not feel like a genius for solving them, but they're still clever and fulfilling.

One thing that is a little different from the rest of Wadjet Eye's oeuvre is the art. Artist Ben Chandler's vibrant, hand-painted backgrounds persist, but the character art has made the switch from intricate pixel art to something more evocative of a comic book: bold colours, thick lines, and a hand-drawn, sketched quality. I thought I'd miss the classic pixels more, but this new style is so confident and the characters so lively that I grew to dig it just as much.

Storytime

The art, puzzles and Thomas Regin's jazzy, bluesy score all contribute towards this being another feather in Wadjet Eye's cap, but I found myself even more smitten than usual this time, elevated as Old Skies is by the potency of the writing and the large cast's phenomenal performances. Gilbert's adventure games have never let me down in this regard, but this feels like a notable leap forward.

The missions initially have an anthology-like vibe—each a discrete adventure set in a different era, but always in New York. They are intimate examinations of human nature, but equally stories about the changing face of the city that Gilbert has spent his career depicting. These aren't really our stories, though. Like Fia, we are observers and facilitators. At first, anyway.

But Old Skies slowly grows into a cohesive story of love, loss and regret that started to punch me in the gut with alarming regularity. There were a few points where I simply had to stop playing for a wee bit to regain my composure. As Fia develops more agency, more personal connections, a desire to have a real life rather than just being stuck in the eye of the storm, surrounded by an ever-changing reality, Old Skies truly becomes something special.

My heart shattered into a million tiny pieces as I listened to her recite her mantra, "Focus on the job", after she'd once again had a chance at a sliver of happiness mercilessly ripped away from her by another change in the timeline. Rather than devolving into melodrama, Sally Beaumont's understated performance is uncomfortably real—you can feel Fia's composure and experience as she tries to move on, but also her weariness, and the cracks snaking across the surface of the walls she's been maintaining for all these years.

Her journey from composed workaholic to tragic hero chips away at all the sci-fi gizmos and macguffins until you've just got this incredibly heartfelt story. Too many time-hopping adventures—especially videogame ones—get lost in the high-stakes, sci-fi nonsense, but Old Skies is far more interested in familiar, evocative human stories, finding the root of what makes time travel such a gripping concept, and then keeping that at the heart of everything.

It's beautiful, sad and one of my favourite adventure games.