Lofty Sky Games, “the team behind the 2026 GDC Best in Play Winner Sky of Tides and the 2024 Peabody Award-nominated Eternal Spring,” has recently shared some updates regarding their upcoming release Hope in The City. First, a newly updated demo will be available to play as part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which begins on October 19. Additionally, a new pre-order trailer for Xbox was dropped on October 15, alongside the announcement that the game’s release will be pushed back by one day, from November 10 to the 11. The reason for this shift, according to Lofty Sky, is “not random,” and fans are encouraged to “keep an eye on the Golden Joystick Awards in the coming days.”
Hope in the City is a narrative investigation game that follows “17-year-old Hope Song [who] thought the national exams were her biggest worry… until she got home to a ransacked apartment and two missing parents. [Players] Investigate through the eyes of an artist, turn sketches into evidence, and watch her family’s mystery grow stranger and darker with every answer.”
Despite the mysteries in her world, players are reminded that Hope is not a detective. Instead, as an artist, “she notices details others overlook,” which is “what makes her dangerous to whoever’s hiding the truth” about both the whereabouts of her parents and the strange behavior of the city. The city itself is so important that Lofty Sky Games describes it as a “character of its own.” Every aspect of it, whether that be a “street, storefront, [or] shadowed alley” is designed to be explored as the “city’s striking visuals pull deeper into its secrets.”
During their investigation, players must “combine Hope’s sketches into insights, and keep adding new thoughts until they grow into breakthroughs.” They are warned that, as the “picture of what happened to [Hope’s] parents take shape, [it will] grow darker than ever imagined.”