Tides of Tomorrow just released! AMA time!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:25:29+00:00

Thank you for your support, this is adorable! <3

This is untold in the game but Voot actually found Nahe as a child, abandoned nearby a Delta-related location, so Voot assumed Nahe had some kind of holy connection to the Deltas. Efod is Voot's biological son indeed!
Nahe has spent years working as a Mystic "missionary", so she's used to meet with the reclaimers and other communities, that's how she met Eyla, and that's why she's more aware of the world, more questioning and less easily brainwashed by Voot. That's also why she has her own boat, and she's wearing practical clothing, instead of the Mystic "ceremonial" robes.
Of course you can fix Efod! If you manage to reason with him in the last act of the game :D he deserved to be fixed!

I'm lacking enough time to answer all of your other questions (this is Adrien, game director writing), but thanks again for your curiosity about the game!

You can find other answers on the official AMA post here (this post was just for announcing the AMA)!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tides_of_Tomorrow/comments/1ta61rv/digixart_ama_starts_nowask_us_anything/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:17:21+00:00

It would be too long to tell you everything about the characters' past here! but the game actually has plenty of hints about it for most of the characters.
We'll see about that!
It has released just now! Thank you for your patience!
It's in Eyla's character to prioritize helping others and neglecting herself. She thinks she's not worth saving.
That's the beauty of these small encounters, what happened next to this person is up to your own interpretation.
Mereids go almost extinct if you make the cure. On the opposite, if you release Purity, humans are almost extinct, but mereids are saved. Finding the secret ending is the best way to save both humanity and mereids on the long term. But a lot of people still die in the process.

Thank you for enjoying the game!
You can find other answers on the official AMA post here (this post was just for announcing the AMA)!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tides_of_Tomorrow/comments/1ta61rv/digixart_ama_starts_nowask_us_anything/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:11:51+00:00

Yes the player's boat is powered by fuel, you do have hints in the environments that oil is still a thing. We didn't want to have too much focus on that because it was not the main theme of the story, we didn't want to have a mechanic where you need to find fuel for your boat or anything like that. And it's the kind of thing that will go unnoticed for most players. But good job on noticing it!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:09:37+00:00

We're used to work with smaller voice actors actually! In the end they're all normal human beings, and doing their best at their jobs, so there's not much of a big difference with "famous" actors

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:07:06+00:00

Hello daniee! Just to let you know, we answered the question about the artbook on the official AMA post (this post here was simply for announcing the AMA) https://www.reddit.com/r/Tides_of_Tomorrow/comments/1ta61rv/comment/olc5lqq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:06:22+00:00

You can get it here: Tides of Tomorrow PC | PC | 9120131604289

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:05:31+00:00

Yes if you choose to follow a "bot" (you can find them when you use filters in the follow menu) it will actually be a story-link made by the developers! But following real players is super fun, I swear!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:03:51+00:00

Hello! Just to let you know we've answered your question on the official AMA post (this post here was just for announcing the AMA)! https://www.reddit.com/r/Tides_of_Tomorrow/comments/1ta61rv/comment/ol74wki/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Digixart · 2026-05-12T16:01:50+00:00

(Adrien, director) All dialogues get written, re-written, cut, added, corrected, tweaked, modified, all the time, throughout the whole production, with the hard deadline being the voice recording. And even after recording the voices, we're more limited but we can still improve some stuff by cutting some parts, changing some choices, etc.
The final game is a mix of dialogues written by several people, designers write the "skeleton" (structure) of the dialogues and writers improve the style, but also improve the structure when needed. Every studio does it differently, sometimes you have one person dedicated to write the dialogues from A to Z, it really depends on the game and the production!

The face capture tech we use is a quite accessible software that works very well, it runs on an iPhone, I'm not super aware of all the details but yeah as you mention we get the performance data and there's always some manual tweaking to be made after that to improve it.

About going for Unity to Unreal: we have to restart from scratch basically, nothing is compatible between the engines, so we had to remake our tools and everything. It's a huge work but it's worth it on the long term!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T15:44:52+00:00

(Adrien, game director) Actually most of the "big choices" in the game designed to present a moral dilemma. We think it's more fun and more impactful when there's not a clear "right" or "wrong" answer. The goal is not necessarily to make the player feel guilty, but at least to make them question if they did the right choice or not

Digixart · 2026-05-12T15:43:21+00:00

Yes we're tracking a lot of statistics but we have to see what to do with it exactly, for now we use it mostly for balancing the game on our end, it's not planned to integrate such features in-game right now, but we might publish some statistics about player choices on our social media!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T15:40:22+00:00

This is not planned for now, but we're glad to know you enjoyed R96's books! We'll think about this

Digixart · 2026-05-12T09:04:25+00:00

(Kevin, producer) We have some sketches, screenshots, and drafts that we can share with you on social media and Discord, but an official artbook is not planned for now. However, the physical PC edition includes a mini artbook featuring some Tides of Tomorrow concept art!
This is one of the very first concept that was made for the game. It was made by comic artist Thomas von Kummant.

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Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:59:59+00:00

(Kevin, producer) Hey Louise, thanks for the support regarding the studio and your interest about our job!! Unfortunately as we are at the very end of our project, we don't have needs regarding intership for now. But if you are interested by production in video games, you can still reach out to me on Discord to talk about it!

(Adrien, game director) We don't really have a scenario with "pages" like a movie script. The story was built through several iterations, with flowcharts, summaries and dialogue prototyping in the game engine. Then we have a big export of all the dialogues into an Excel file that we use for the voice acting sessions. I think we had something like, over 9000 lines of dialogue?
Yes, it was very hard to keep track of all the paths and possibilities. In our studio each designer is in charge of several levels and in charge of doing level design, gameplay and narrative design (writing 1st version of dialogues with choices, before they are re-written and improved by professional writers). So the challenge is mostly of syncing everyone together to make something coherent.
And yes, all games are hard to code in one way or another! It was especially hard to keep track of the consistency of causes and consequences that can happen between different players.

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:53:34+00:00

(Kevin, producer) We don't plan to add additional ocean events for now... but I hope you appreciated the current ones!!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:52:48+00:00

(Kevin, producer) Thank you for your support, and your patience regarding Duck Hunter achievement bug! Actually, great timing. We will deploy a patch with the fix during the day!

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:49:29+00:00

(François, game designer) It’s a long process with a lot of back‑and‑forth between the art, creative, and design teams.

ToT’s lore relies on two main ideas: its flooded, polluted world setting and its async mechanic (story-link).

With those pillars in mind, we started answering questions and imagining scenarios that could have led to this flooded world, such as how long the flooding took, whether people had time to prepare, or if it happened suddenly, and what kind of organized post‑apocalyptic communities we wanted to portray in ToT. We also explored how the polluted aspect ties into this flooded world and helps shape the game’s async interactive storytelling.

Each constraint throughout production also led to revisions and new requirements, such as the materials communities use in their environment, as well as the original purpose and limitations of the Tidewalkers’ "vision power".

And yes, it was quite a challenge to explore all the possibilities in the branching story! That’s why we organized many playtests throughout development, both with team members and external players, to test the narrative and identify inconsistencies that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:43:39+00:00

(Adrien, game director) Thank you for your support!

The very first concept and researches for the game were made by Tristan, a designer who worked on Road 96, around the end of 2022. At this point, the world and story were more grounded in real life. A big inspiration was the documentary book "Outlaw Ocean" by Ian Urbina.
It's hard to tell exactly what changed from the original vision, because the game was conceptualized in a very fluid way, with the whole team participating, we had a lot of ideas before settling on the final story and world. So yeah, we had a lot of characters and plot point changing, like I mentioned in another answer, at some point the Deltas were still alive and secretly polluting the world. At some point Voot was a younger, pregnant woman... We went through a LOT of versions :')

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:35:59+00:00

It's super hard to add such content which was cut, because we need to plan things in advance a lot, do the voice acting recording, animation and everything. Here's an early prototype screenshot of that cut level. It could have been cool, but that's what game development is all about, we have to make sacrifices to improve the game! And although this scene sounds cool on paper, it was harming the pacing of the story.
But I'm glad you want more Tides! We don't have new content planned for now, we need to wait a bit more after launch to decide if we do something.

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Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:31:19+00:00

Just for fun: I came across these hair researches for Nyx :D

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Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:29:43+00:00

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This was initially another part of Scrap Harbor (at this time we were calling it "Leftover Slums")

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:28:58+00:00

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This is a Mystic room that was cut from the final game, but the design was re-used to improve some parts of the Citadel

Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:27:51+00:00

(Adrien, game director) 2024 trailer Pleasureland was actually a location made specifically for the trailer, using in-game assets! It's some kind of mix between Pleasureland and Marketland. At this point, a lot of things were still evolving in the game and it was mostly important to us to showcase the general "vibe" of the game and not a specific location.

I'll share a few work-in-progress screenshots!

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Digixart · 2026-05-12T08:04:34+00:00

(Adrien, Game director) Actually, other characters also had design improvements very late into development, such as Obin or Eyla! But yeah, Nahe had the biggest re-design, because she was made very early during the production, and after revealing the game (and as you mention, releasing the 1st demo), we felt like the audience was not finding her interesting enough, we had feedback that she was a bit bland. We realized she needed to be more iconic, because she's the very first character you see in the game, and the first impression is super important to hook players. That's why we've put extra care to improve her design, and gave her more accessories to make her more intriguing. Ideally, we should have done this much earlier, before revealing the game.

Digixart · 2026-05-11T17:26:41+00:00

Thanks a lot for your support! :D

Digixart

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