Old Skies

Old Skies is a thoughtful, dialog-driven point-and-click adventure game developed by Wadjet Eye Games and designed by Dave Gilbert. Set in the near future of 2080, the game explores the ethical and personal costs of time travel, which has become a luxury service controlled by the international agency ChronoZen.

The Agent and the Archive

The player assumes the role of Fia Quinn, one of ChronoZen's few field agents. Fia's job is to escort wealthy clients on missions to the past, ensuring they comply with strict regulations designed to prevent major temporal paradoxes. While the world's history can shift around her, Fia, being "chrono-locked," retains all her memories, a psychological burden that leaves her feeling isolated and stagnant.

The core gameplay relies on classic adventure game mechanics blended with a unique technological advantage:

• Dialogue and Deduction: The majority of puzzles are solved not through inventory items, but through exhaustive conversations and subtle observation. Fia must meticulously gather information from clients, locals, and environmental details in the past.

• The Historical Archive: Fia has access to ChronoZen's vast database, allowing her to look up details about any individual or event throughout history—even future details of past characters. This enables complex, outside-the-box deduction puzzles, where knowledge of a character's future actions or secrets is used to manipulate events in their past.

A Journey Through Time

The game is split into six distinct chapters, each focusing on a new client and a new time period, all within various historical versions of New York City. Missions are never as simple as they seem, often quickly evolving from a sentimental visit into an investigation of ulterior motives and hidden agendas:

• Diverse Eras: Fia travels to pivotal moments in history, including the Prohibition era, the Industrial Revolution, the near future of the 2040s, and the tragedy of 9/11. Each location features detailed, painterly backgrounds that capture the unique aesthetics of the time.

• The Rewind Protocol: When Fia encounters a dangerous situation that leads to her demise (a surprisingly frequent occurrence), ChronoZen's emergency rewind protocol kicks in. This effectively creates a time loop, allowing Fia to restart the moment of danger with the critical knowledge gained from her "death," turning failure into a crucial learning mechanism.

Ultimately, Old Skies is not just about solving historical puzzles; it's a poignant and well-written character study about the emotional toll of witnessing constant change while remaining fixed in time.