Developer Sabotage Studio has announced that fantasy RPG Sea of Stars will be available on PlayStation Plus at launch at the Extra and Premium tiers, and a demo is out now on PS4 and PS5. At the PlayStation.Blog, Sabotage level designer Philippe Dionne discussed it in more detail.
The Sea of Stars demo specifically highlights the game’s traversal system with segments that will be featured in the launch version of the experience, representing what the team is hoping to accomplish in terms of overall tone and vibe. The demo was made with minimizing spoilers in mind, so if you want to check it out for yourself, you won’t need to worry about having any narrative beats spoiled early.
Traversal in Sea of Stars is one of the experience’s core components, with the blog post providing an analysis of how the team aimed to make exploration feel important. Dionne said the goal is for “exploration to be as fully fleshed out as combat,” with players able to seamlessly move around environments with plenty of things to interact with.
“All environments have been designed to be tactile and reinforce the players’ habit of reflexively experimenting with them to discover new things by themselves without the need for intrusive tutorials or UI indicators that would break the immersion,” said Dionne.
The Sea of Stars PlayStation demo offers a snapshot of what players with PS Plus Extra and Premium will be able to play for free next month. (Otherwise, the game costs $34.99.) It’s a move that will surely result in more early adopters, but it’s especially interesting considering Sea of Stars is also launching day one on Game Pass for Xbox and PC. In other words, if you subscribe to Game Pass or the upper two tiers of PlayStation Plus, you can expect to play a shiny new RPG without paying a dime more come launch.
Sea of Stars releases for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S on August 29, 2023. In the meantime, look forward to our documentary on Sea of Stars, which premieres on August 15.
