Sabotage Studio, the developer behind it the awesome side-scrolling ninja platformer The messengerannounced that its upcoming turn-based RPG A sea of stars will hit rival subscription services PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass on the same day: August 29. This will be the first time, to our knowledge, that a game is available on both subscription services at the same time.
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The retro-style RPG was already scheduled to launch on Xbox Game Pass in June, with the developer tweeted afterwards that he was “extremely excited” to confirm the news. Now Sabotage Studio has announced that A sea of stars is also coming to PlayStation Plus towards the end of August, and a demo is currently available for download on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
On PlayStation Bloglevel designer Philippe Dionne made it clear that the current demo is not the final product, but “represents what we’re aiming for”.
“The demo includes areas that will be part of the final game, but we’ve taken care to choose a section that doesn’t reveal major spoilers from the main story,” Dion wrote. “It’s designed to give a hint of context, but mostly shows off some gameplay systems and mechanics around dungeon crawling and combat.” It aims to provide a sense of tone and atmosphere without giving away the highlights of the journey.”
A sea of stars is inspired by classics such as Chrono Trigger and is a prequel to acclaimed game of 2018 The messenger. It follows how two mighty heroes combine the powers of the moon and the sun to thwart an evil alchemist known only as The Fleshmancer, who is terrorizing the world with his monstrous creations. With six playable characters and an emphasis on traversal, A sea of stars seeks to tell an epic mystical tale about the power of friendship.
Sabotage Studio declined my cityrequest for comment.
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A sea of stars will be available on the PlayStation Plus games catalog, a library of games that you can access by subscribing to the $15 Extra or $18 Premium tiers. It’s not first-party as it was developed by an independent studio, but given Sony’s remarks about how adding exclusive games to PS Plus on the same day they launch would reduce their qualityit will be interesting to see how successful A sea of stars will be. If it does well on the subscription service, it could show Sony that making its first-party games available to subscribers to the service can be beneficial for developers and gamers alike. Who knows?
A sea of stars will also be available for Nintendo and Switch and PC.