Revision 6

Overview

CyancookGames confirmed in February 2026 that Of Peaks and Tides will host offline player playtest events throughout 2026, giving the public hands-on time with the game ahead of its full PC launch. The studio framed the playtests as a continuation of the public-facing rollout that began with the Gamescom 2025 demo, allowing players to experience updated builds in person before the commercial release.

What Has Been Confirmed

TapTap Game Fest, September 2026

The first event of the 2026 programme to carry a date and a city was announced on 27 August 2026 through the game's Steam page. The studio's Chinese storefront account had posted the participation notice six days earlier, on 21 August 2026, so on this occasion the Chinese channel led rather than followed.

The two language versions of the announcement do not describe Cao Xiaowen's role with the same word. The English post calls him Game Founder. The Chinese post calls him 游戏主创, lead creator. Those are not synonyms, and both are recorded here rather than reconciled into one.

The Chinese version also closes in the voice of the game's mascot, 小灵, whose English name is Little Spirit. The English version drops that line.

As of 2026-09-12 the studio has published no attendance figure, no boss-kill count and no account of how the event went, and nothing about the appearance has been published beyond its own announcements on the Steam page and the Chinese storefront.

Public Showings Before 2026

gamescom 2025 was the worldwide playable premiere and the stand drew long queues. Tokyo Game Show 2025 was the second international showing: it ran the same demo and added new worldbuilding material on top. Shanghai in September 2026 is the first time the game has been playable offline in China.

Boss Kills at the 2025 Shows

The studio published a figure for each 2025 show, counting the attendees who actually killed the demo boss. Both numbers are low enough to work as a difficulty statement in their own right.

Both counts come from the studio rather than from a tally taken at the stand, and no equivalent figure has been published for the Shanghai appearance as of 2026-09-12. What made the fight that hard is covered on Combat.

Show Merchandise

The illustrated creature cards handed out at gamescom are the same official card format that carries first-party creature descriptions on its face, so they are a source of fact as well as a giveaway. See Creatures.

Why Offline

Offline playtests trade reach for fidelity. By hosting players on dedicated hardware in a controlled space, CyancookGames can show off the demanding Physics System and the interactive object mechanics in their intended performance envelope. The Steam page system requirements suggest the game targets relatively high-end PCs in 2026, and an offline test rig sidesteps the variance of consumer machines.

How To Follow

The studio has still not published a sign-up portal for the 2026 programme as a whole, and the Shanghai appearance is a ticketed public expo rather than a recruited playtest, so it does not set a precedent for how the other events will be entered. The most reliable indicators that another one is coming remain the game's own Steam page and the studio's community channels; the Steam wishlist also surfaces playtest invites when developers open them. This page will be updated as further dates, cities or recruitment channels are confirmed.

Related Topics

• Of Peaks and Tides

• Gamescom 2025 Demo

• CyancookGames

Studio Communications (February 2026)

Two Steam News posts in early February 2026 framed the lead-up to the playtests and clarified the studio's player-facing communications.

Together, the two posts established the official Steam News feed as the studio's primary direct channel for playtest-adjacent announcements. Players hoping to participate should monitor that feed, the Steam wishlist invitation system, and CyancookGames' social channels.

An At-Home Build in Progress

Alongside the in-person events, CyancookGames has said more than once that it is working toward a build players can run at home. It raised the point at the August 2025 reveal and again after the Gamescom showing, in both cases framing the show-floor demo as a slice and the at-home version as the goal. No date, distribution route, or sign-up channel has ever been attached to it, and the February 2026 posts that promised gameplay trailers and hands-on demo events during the year did not specify whether any of those events would be playable from home.

Prior Public Showings

Two hands-on events preceded the promised playtests. The Gamescom 2025 demo in Cologne, from August 20 to 24, 2025, was the first playable build shown to the public. CyancookGames followed it with a booth at Tokyo Game Show 2025 that September, where the chief technology officer gave a live interview on site. The studio stated that the Tokyo showing existed mainly to gather player opinions and that the project would afterwards enter a closed development phase, which sets the expectation that the 2026 playtests will show a substantially later build than either event.

Reaffirmed in July 2026

The studio's July 2026 development update, which dealt with audio design, closed by saying the team looked forward to hearing player thoughts during its upcoming playtest and that feedback would keep shaping the world. That is the most recent public confirmation that a playtest is still planned, and it implies the audio rework will be one of the things being evaluated. It still did not attach a date, city, venue, or sign-up route to the event.