Games Like TIDE OR HIDE

YOU ARE ARMED. YOU ARE STILL A DUCK.

Someone took the egg. TIDE OR HIDE is a 1-4 player co-op survival game about a duck family with a hatchet, a stolen egg to find, and ninety-nine nights to get through. You are small. Four armed hunters standing over your camp at midnight is not a fight you win by walking at them. What decides that fight is water - deep water is a wall nothing on four legs will cross, and every night it drains away. Day lasts three minutes. Night lasts ninety seconds. Whatever you need after dark, you needed before it.

CUT WOOD. KEEP THE FIRE. COUNT THE DAYS.

Day one hands you a hatchet and a simple instruction: cut trees, gather firewood. That is the loop, and it never really changes. Wood feeds the fire at camp. Branches and scrap feed the workbench. Fish and rabbits feed you. And every trip out has to end before the water leaves, because the way back is made of water. Meanwhile the counter at the top of the screen keeps going down. Three days until the raid. Two. One.

THE MAP DRAINS ONE PIECE AT A TIME

Night does not lower the water evenly. Each region of the island has its own drain schedule, and you learn them the hard way.

Rain delays the drain in some regions. Fog hides you and hides what is behind you. Knowing which channel dies at which second is the difference between a route home and a very long walk.

YOU KNOW WHEN THEY ARE COMING

The raid is on the clock from days out. Day seven, clear skies, one day until the raid. The countdown sits at the top of the screen the entire time, and then it is tomorrow. Everything between now and then is preparation. Stack the firewood. Fill the shared materials. Craft the light. Arm whoever is going to be standing in the open when the water drops. Then the tide goes out, the hunters walk in, and they start taking the camp apart. Kill or drive off every one of them before dawn and you keep what you gathered. Leave a single one standing when the light comes back and they walk out with your firewood - and the firewood was the whole point.

WHAT IS OUT THERE

Everything on this island can be killed. Bring the right tool and pick the right ground.

THE ONE YOU CANNOT KILL

There is a woman in a white dress who walks the drained ground after dark. She does not run. She does not stop. Nothing in your hands does anything to her. What stops her is light. Hold the flashlight on her and she is pinned where she stands - and the flashlight holds for fifteen seconds before it needs ten to recover. That is the whole negotiation: fifteen seconds standing still, or fifteen seconds running. Decide before she is close enough to matter.

BUILD WHAT TELLS YOU HOW LONG YOU HAVE

Branches and scrap metal go into the workbench, and what the workbench mostly gives back is information.

On an island where the ground moves on a timetable, knowing the timetable is the upgrade.

ONE CAMP, ONE STOCKPILE, FOUR DUCKS

NINETY-NINE NIGHTS

Every day is one tide. Ninety-nine of them stand between your camp and the end of the season. You will not get through them by being the strongest thing on the island. You will get through them by knowing which channel drains at which second, and being on the right side of it when it does.

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