Black Tide
(college project)
The spy who saw too much
Auguste Dupin is a french spy on a secret mission. After infiltrating an english ship, an unknown threat surges from
beyond - a beast that rules the realm of darkness, driving his victims to madness on sight. A devastating conflict of monster and men ensues. Will Dupin be able to sneak his way to the truth with his sanity intact?
Black Tide is a browser atmospheric puzzle platformer with a horror theme. In it, the player must sneak past the vigilant eyes of a Shoggoth-inspired creature by pushing objects, timing jumps, pulling levers and solving riddles. The game takes place in a fancy ship, home to secret government experiments that should've never taken place. It is the player's job to find a way
forward and reveal the deadly mystery behind the evil eyes.
Level Design
Mechanically, Black Tide plays like a classic puzzle platformer (ie Limbo), albeit with a slightly bigger focus on stealth and puzzle-solving. Each level (room) contains a new set of spots where eyes appear - getting caught by them means game over (level restart). By manipulating light, objects and devices with basic actions (pull/push, crawl, jump) in the right order, the player may obstruct or avoid sightlines altogether in order to reach safety.
The combinatory possibilities of puzzles are explored through
the different kinds of objects and how they physically interact with the world, including boxes, carts that can be crawled under, lights that can blind eyes, elevators, switches etc.
In addition to the puzzle-solving, the player must be careful to time their movements. Eyes may activate intermitently, and may even move around depending on where they lie.
Check out this .pdf (in Portuguese) for the game's level design documentation. Every object is annotated, along with every step to solving every puzzle. A grid is featured for correct scale referencing.
Music
Spooky tracks for a spooky game.
Black Tide demo on itch.io (flash no longer supported)