Sea of Remnants was one of the games at Summer Game Fest that drew my attention pretty quickly, as the artwork was stunning, and I am always a glutton for piratey-type games. After an hour playing through different parts of the game, I found myself head over heels in love with the art and a bit confused by the story and gameplay.
You enter a world of wooden puppet-looking characters. Fun, interesting, and full of customization for your own character, Sea of Remnants knows what it was going for from an art direction standpoint. Each character feels unique, and the bosses look magnificent, including a giant evil mermaid that I fought near the end of the demo. The boat looks and feels great, and making your way through the water is impressive.
The character you play as actually starts the demo on a lifeboat, making their way through the open ocean as creatures swim beautifully around them. As you get closer to the destination, you begin to see ghost ships. An air of mystery surrounded me as I wanted to know more and more as I got closer to what ended up being the ship I would be piloting later on in the demo. My character awoke to a doctor caring for them as well as a young woman whom my character was clutching dearly when they were found.
Once the story and gameplay started (past the opening area), I found myself a little confused at multiple points. It wasn’t easy to figure out what was going on when the audio didn’t match either the captions or the mouths, and the captions weren't even the same scene at times. This game is still in development, but it did cause some major confusion as I couldn’t figure out which source of story to follow in any given scene.
I entered a bar scene as my character was looking for people to hire for the ship, and we found a nice chaos gremlin, and we proceeded to enter into one of the longest cutscenes to introduce combat I’ve ever played. I watched silently as the music was fabulous, but the audio issues created some major confusion as to who was saying what, why, and to whom. Once the cutscene was over, we started combat.
Combat is turn-based for the most part, with some overworld sword combat you can do (this did not come up in my demo, though). During the turn-based combat, you have access to individual abilities for each character as well as a blocking mechanic to take less damage. I’m not sure I ever fully understood how the damage output worked or if I was on the right track, but I won in the end, even if it was by a thread.
Once we won, my character and the new girl made their way to the beach, where they, I think, discussed if she was or wasn’t the girl who they had on the boat my character was holding. Which, she couldn’t be, but they’re somehow related, and I believe that to be an actual plot point.
We finished that conversation, and the developers threw me into a stage MUCH MUCH MUCH later in the game. We fought a mermaid boss, which was interesting, but I never felt like I understood any of the combat. Sometimes characters would just attack even if I didn’t press a button, which could very well be a special ability of that character, but because I was in a boss area without knowing any of the characters at all, I had no idea what I was doing. I defeated the mermaid and had the choice to either kill her or let her go. However, the controller wouldn’t let me choose, so I’m not sure what would happen to her if you let her go.
While Sea of Remnants is a beautifully stunning game to look at, the audio mess and the lack of understanding of the combat made it hard time for me to enjoy the story and gameplay. If those elements can be fixed up, this could be an extremely wonderful world to play in, but as of right now, it needs a little pick-me-up.
Sea of Remnants is slated to be released in 2026 and can be wishlisted on Steam.
