The world doesn’t visually set itself apart from any other sci-fi, but it doesn’t really need to. Old Skies tells Fia’s personal tale, which is a fascinating exploration of the possibilities, problems, and temptations experienced by the time agents at ChronoZen. I’ve seen time travel stories before, but this is a fresh, specific take, focusing on the monotonous, unfulfilling life they lead. History in Old Skies is in a constant state of flux. People, places, and events could be “chronoshifted” at any time thanks to the ripple effects caused by time travellers. Only ChronoZen agents are exempt from this phenomenon, leaving Fia and her coworkers unable to form attachments to anything outside of their work. The game cleverly illustrates just how commonplace these chronoshifts are by having all the visible shop signs —and the city view from Fia’s apartment — change each time you see them.

During the first few chapters, Fia appears to be okay with her lot, but her perspective changes when she forms an unexpected connection with an incidental change to history that she helps to create, only to have it chronoshifted out of existence again. This is a good bedrock for what I thought was a very moving emotional journey for Fia as she rethinks what she wants out of her life. It’s a slow and gradual change to her character, and one that was done masterfully well. Old Skies also finds room for a heartwarming meet-cute between Fia and another woman that develops into something deeper, which I always love to see.

As for the minute-to-minute gameplay, it’s what you’d expect from any point-and-click. The focus here is more on talking to characters and investigating scenes than getting creative with using item 1 on item 2 (although there is a bit of that). At its best, Fia has to travel back and forth between several moments in time to manipulate history so she can overcome obstacles, but I feel like the game was too reserved with how they utilised this. It’s by far the most interesting aspect of the puzzles, and yet not every chapter requires Fia to do it, relying instead on more traditional point-and-click staples like finding something in the environment. It makes the parts without time travel feel a bit average in comparison to the high points.

Another mechanic that I wanted to see more of was searching the archive. After playing The Roottrees Are Dead, my expectations for a research-based mechanic have been raised, and the one in Old Skies doesn’t come close. Fia has access to an archive of the entire current world history state, which is updated whenever history changes. This is a terrific concept and is used on occasion as part of puzzle solutions, but expanding on it could have really elevated the game. The first problem is that it’s a pretty small part of the gameplay when it feels like the characters should be making far more intensive use of such a nominally large archive. It also just doesn’t feel satisfying enough to use; rather than typing search terms yourself, which might have allowed for a bit of experimentation, you can only search limited key names and words that are relevant to the case at hand by selecting them from a menu, which is less immersive than it could have been.