Playing Sky: Children of the Light’s Steam Next Fest offers something I didn’t know I needed. While the inner RPG enthusiast in me is spoiled with the depth and complexity on show in Baldur’s Gate 3 and ever-destined to return to frequent haunts like Final Fantasy 14 to pillage further through 10 years of content, the Journey creators’ chill MMO reminds me that there’s great joy in little at all.
Available on mobile, Switch, PlayStation, and soon PC, Sky: Children of the Light takes Journey’s approach to stripping everything back so that the simple pleasures shine through. Surfing down my first sandhill is an instant throwback that teases the delights of movement that lie ahead. There’s more floating and soaring to be done this time around, and engaging in the history of the world offers more means to move, more areas to explore.
Journeying across seven dreamlike realms brings you across various lost spirits you can liberate through witnessing their memories, which slowly piece together the sense of community that existed long before you arrived. All this feeds into a bigger mystery of a gloomy fallen kingdom you can restore light to by finding out what’s happened.
It’s not just the locals that stand out, though, as you come across other players delighting in the same discoveries that you are. The means to communicate through text is stripped away, which leaves you to vaguely get across your intention through emoting or simply trust someone to take you by the hand and show you something you’ve never seen before.
Communicating with a party in Final Fantasy 14 through in-game text or voice chat to topple a boss or an entire raid is a highlight of spending time in Eorzea, though it’s also the reason I enjoy not being able to communicate at all in Sky. Mastering your job’s rotation in Final Fantasy 14 is as complex as keeping an eye on the telltale signs of a boss to figure out their next move, so Sky’s willingness to let me drift makes it the perfect chaser to Square Enix’s critically acclaimed MMO. I have a laundry list of bosses to swat, quests to complete, and items to grind for in Final Fantasy 14, but in Sky I need only wander and glide to see where the wind takes me as grander curiosities unfold.
More? Here are 15 more Steam Next Fest demos you have to play this October.
