Tide Up

Tide Up is a haunting, surreal horror adventure developed and published by Gustav that uses minimalist design and symbolic storytelling to explore trauma, guilt, and the haunting echoes of memory. Built in RPG Maker, it may appear at first glance to be a simple pixel-art title, but beneath its modest surface lies a deeply emotional and psychologically disturbing experience. The game follows a young girl who awakens in a dark, unfamiliar forest with no clear sense of how she arrived there. Her only guide is the faint glimmer of scattered pearls—objects she must collect to find a way out. What begins as a straightforward task quickly unravels into a nightmarish journey through distorted memories, abstract spaces, and grotesque manifestations of fear and loss. The world of Tide Up feels like a fever dream, where every area pulses with quiet menace. The environments are both beautiful and unsettling: overgrown forests lit by pale moonlight, empty corridors lined with faceless mannequins, and rooms that seem to shift and breathe as you pass through them. The pixel art, though simple, is meticulously crafted to evoke a sense of unease through contrast—childlike visuals paired with matur…

I liked it.

its far less defined than Cat in the Box, which is something else from this developer that really colore dmy expectations. i'm left with FAR more questions than answers, and the environment feels nonsensical and confusing. Thats probably on purpose, but theres not enough groundwork laid to get me on teh same page as the character, so im left just completely confused by all of it. Interesting designs, but, its both too slow and too fast to be able to REALLY chew on it or get surprised.

Awesome short horror experience!

I simply do not understand the need of so many games like this to put an enormous amount of chase scenes or other events that barely allow a second of messing up. It wasn't fun when it was about breaking a door and it isn't fun as a final boss fight. It's hard enough with the clunky controls in RPG maker games. While the story was interesting, it also seemed to be a bit all over the place. I couldn't get myself to care enough to finish this game. For that, I would have to repeat that atrocious last fight over and over again (it also really needed to have MULTIPLE phases) until I finally didn't mess up for ONE second. Really killed my enjoyment of the game.

Really unique and creative playthrough, i love how everything changes around you throughout the game without you even realizing it, until you walk into a room you had previously and everything has changed. also i like all the hidden messages. definitely would recommend. creepy, meaningful, and fun.