Tideheart
A downloadable Tideheart for Windows
What is Tideheart?
Tideheart is a narrative-focused underwater fantasy adventure centered around exploration, environmental storytelling, and fluid underwater traversal. Descend into the remains of a forgotten world where ancient structures, submerged ruins, and strange lifeforms hide the truth behind a long-lost civilization.
Built by the small independent team at Broken Tail Interactive, Tideheart combines atmospheric exploration, puzzle solving, and character driven storytelling into an immersive underwater journey designed to make players rethink what an underwater game can feel like.
This vertical slice/tech demo lays the foundation for that grand adventure with emphasis on building fluid swimming and movement systems, developing 360 combat, and illustrating the added dimension/verticality that puzzles will bring.
Exploration
Swim freely through sprawling underwater environments ranging from sunlit reefs and abandoned facilities to deep ocean trenches swallowed by darkness. Every location is designed vertically, encouraging players to explore entire spaces from top to bottom.
Hidden pathways, environmental details, and optional discoveries reward curiosity and observation.
Movement & Traversal
Tideheart places heavy emphasis on making underwater movement feel fluid, responsive, and enjoyable. Especially the jumps! Momentum, verticality, and freedom of movement are central to exploration, creating an experience built around immersion rather than restriction.
Navigate tight ruins, drift through open waters, and uncover secrets hidden far beneath the surface.
Environmental Storytelling
The world of Tideheart tells its story through its environments. Crumbling architecture, forgotten machinery, abandoned research sites, and traces of those who came before all help piece together the mysteries buried beneath the ocean!
Every area is crafted to feel lived in, layered with history, and connected to the larger world.
Narrative
The core of Tideheart is made up by the bonds between two siblings who couldn't be more different but utilize these differences as strength to explore where no other merfolk has gone.
Az, our protagonist, is a scavenger in a world built on the remnants of something ancient and powerful. Scavengers are the ones who go where others won’t! Diving into dangerous ruins to recover lost technology, artifacts, and fragments of a forgotten past.
Sam, Az’s sister, on the other hand has eyes set firmly on the future. She takes what he finds and asks: “What can this become?” She’s a tinkerer, a creator, a problem solver and, occasionally, a bit of a problem maker. She sees the world not as it is, but as it could be.
Heavily inspired by classic exploration games Tideheart focuses on these two as they explore the true depths of the ocean they call home! The game’s character-driven storytelling is brought to life by animated films and projects that make up the team’s background as well as the atmosphere, emotion, and weight of the ocean and its history!
Follow Tideheart’s Development!
Follow Tideheart and Broken Tail Interactive across social media for development updates, behind the scenes content, concept art, and future announcements!
Share the game with friends and help support independent game development!
Community feedback plays an important role in helping shape the game as development continues, from lore exploration, storyboards, and so much more - we showcase EVERYTHING on our Patreon funded by your support!
Website - https://brokentailinteractive.com/
Linktree - https://linktr.ee/brokentailinteractive
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/BrokenTail
Discord - https://discord.gg/khs8Xk9Md7
BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/brokentail.bsky.social
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brokentailinteractive
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brokentailinteractive
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@brokentailinteractive
The recommended specs for this build are:
A gamepad is required.
Minimum:
CPU: Intel i5-8600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1070 or AMD RX 5600 XT
RAM: 12GB
Storage: SSD recommended
DirectX: DX12
Recommended:
CPU: Intel i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2070 or AMD RX 6700 XT
RAM: 16GB DDR4
Storage: SSD
DirectX: DX12
Updates!
v0.03.2 - Black screen on launch fix has been updated.
v0.03.3 - Intermittent opening crash fix has been updated! Along with a few performance tweaks, UI tweaks and updates to the Tideheart_Guide pdf.
If you downloaded the game before June 1st, please redownload the Tideheart.zip file.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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It feels like one of the first fresh game ideas that I've seen in years and years. It's not derivative in its mechanics, it wants for nothing in charm. The game demo is playable, explorable, and it teases a deep lore. Can't wait to see what comes next for this project.
Thank you so much! This has absolutely been a project powered by passion for the team and putting out this vertical slice demo took the entire team's love and care for games and animation to create.
We'll be continuing to update the progress on development through our socials and our Patreon (which has a free tier specifically for dev updates!)
We hope you'll follow us along for the ride!
I've been looking for a 3D game where you get to be an aquatic merman or mermaid for years and it looks like one's finally coming! The demo itself looks great so far, and the puzzle was entertaining.
A lot of what we wanted to do in our development was to "make water in video games FUN" because of the history of un-fun water levels in games and we're SO happy to hear that you found what you were looking for in our game!
We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we hope you'll follow us along for the development through our socials and patreon! Which has free tier specifically for keeping up with the develeopment!