The tide is getting high around here, but we’re holding on. Okay, okay, no more tide-related puns. Well, maybe we’ll have to sea. Anyway, good news here at High Tide Harbor Tidal Wave Headquarters! I’ve sat down with the masterminds behind our voyage to the town of sexy, intelligent women and asked a few questions.
The game seems to gather inspiration from a few different games and places. One thing I saw come across clearly was the conversation mechanic popular from adventure games of the 90s. What really inspired the game?
Antoine: You’re right, a lot of the inspiration came from the old (Newgrounds) hentai games of the 90s. When Gazukull and I first started talking about creating a new game, the classic Ganguro Girl game popped up a lot as one of the games we both liked. From there we started working on a bit of a progression system and some quests for the girls.
Gazukull: Absolutely! We were brainstorming and I said “I think I played this like 11ty billion hours,” and Antoine was like “SAME” and so we decided to go with a dating sim grind like Ganguro Girl. I think I am going to go and play Ganguro Girl right now…
The different personalities of the girls come across so clearly, from Kami’s polka dotted thong to the satanic dildo Samira has. Were they hard to pin down? Do you have favorites?
A: The first few were fairly easy to come up with: Jessenia of course, a cute shy girl (Kami), an easy going fun loving one (Martina), a tight ass (Isobel) and then the others took a bit more work. I still remember an early Asian version of Samira for example!
We wanted to have something for everyone to enjoy and I think we managed to achieve that with the wide range of different girls. Using a game with dialog and quests instead of an image set is also a great way to get some more personality into the girls and make players a bit more attached to them. My favorites are definitely Martina and Gwyneth. Gazukull really outdid himself and they both look amazing.
G: We wanted to try and cover a broad spectrum of girls…like Zithromax and STD’s. Jessenia is obviously a favorite of mine, she has been with me as a primary character for a long time now. Kami was a stretch from my normal work and Isobel is probably close to my heart as well. Isobel started as a human, but then we started into the work and were like “WE DON’T HAVE AN ELF!” I run a Deviant art group called Busty-Elves, it was a travesty to not include one. It’s true, Samira was at first a tall lanky Asian female.
Every man who’s not your main character is so conventionally unattractive. Is there a reason for that?
A: Haha! I leave all the graphics to Gazukull, he’s the expert after all. It’s true though, but it might have something to do with the fact that most other men in the game are “bad guys”. Come to think of it, we don’t really have any good guys in the game… Except maybe the booze merchant, I don’t think he’s particularly ugly, is he?
G: You know… I didn’t realize that until you said something. I don’t know. Perhaps I am influenced by the “Witcher” universe where basically all dudes are ugly.
You go to a few lengths in the game to make sure I don’t see the main character’s face at all. Is that to try and get a neutral mask effect; so your players feel like it’s them playing with those lovely ladies? Or was there another reason?
A: This is one for Gazukull, but I personally like it this way. I don’t really need to see the main character’s face. If Gaz is busy composing and rendering, then I’d rather have him focus his time and energy on the girls instead!
G: Well, I did want the game to be “Everyman”, but that is a tall order. Originally, I would have loved to have the game be where you could pick to be a black dude, Asian dude, pacific islander dude, demon dude, goblin dude, dude with 2 dicks, etc. The constraint was my computer hardware. Not to get into shop talk, but I recently (2016) switched to Daz Studio and in terms of GPU rendering it is a lot more sensitive and I didn’t have a single computer that could handle a lot of what we wanted to do within a time frame that was reasonable. I think Antoine is onto something with his 3D games that he is going to.
Back to those distinct personalities, each woman was strong and independent. A doctor, a store owner, and a whole lot more. What made you chose to have a town basically run by women?
A: I didn’t actually realize that. The professions just sort of came with their personalities and I don’t think it was a conscious decision to make a town run by women. I guess it’s also easier to add an interesting background and themed quests when the girl has an interesting job too.
G: I don’t think that was totally a conscious choice. I think it may just seem that way because we didn’t include tons of extraneous male npc’s to just talk to. The antagonist just wants to get his “D” wet and will do anything to make it happen, to include ignoring the entire male population. You know, like in real life.
What were the lead programs in making a game like this?
A: The game is completely made in Unity 3D. After we released our strip blackjack game a couple years ago I dove into the game engine and started to learn anything there was to learn about it. This is my first attempt since then at making something more of a game with character progression and where players get rewarded with sex scenes for doing a good job. Quite often you hear that Unity isn’t suited for 2D games or visual novels, but I think you can make the engine do whatever you want as long as you know what you’re doing. I guess this game proves that.
G: Antoine is the hardest working man I know and Unity is his weapon. That being said, for this title, I used primary Daz Studio / Poser and Photoshop.
How long did you work on this game? Was it an idea in the works for a long time before you actually started working on it?
A: I had to look this up, but we started emailing about creating a new game in November last year. Initially we had some pretty big plans for the game and we wanted to create animations for every girl. After getting some test renders we decided to go for images instead and scrap some of the game ideas such as a reputation system with the girls. It’s always disappointing to have to scrap things, but in the end I think this was a good idea and made the project easier to manage. The biggest risk with a project like this is risk going too big and never finishing it.
During development of the game my mother suddenly passed away and I had to stop for a while. I live abroad and traveling to stay with my dad meant not having access to my workstation or development tools and I just didn’t feel like doing anything for a while.
After the summer we picked it up again and finished the game fairly quickly. In the end I think I spent the most time on writing dialog for the girls and testing the game. There are around 1.500 lines of text in the game and I’ve played the game so often I can’t stand playing it anymore. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll pick it up again.
G: Antoine summed all of that up nicely.
Most of the scenes in the game are all one on one (which was incredibly sexy). Are there any plans for threesomes with the main character and more than one girl? Might that be more like a sequel kind of thing?
A: Again, I leave all the graphics decisions to Gazukull. I trust he knows what his fans like. There are a couple of threesomes and a blowbang in the bonus scenes though!
G: Actually, what Antoine said. At some point Jessenia will invite you to a blowbang. I like to include situations like this, like an episode of Seinfeld, are you like “Hey? Why does there have to be an additional 4 dicks besides mine?” or are you “MORE THE MERRIER!!” Gwen will also invite another girl to play at some point, you know, for healing purposes. There is a cock golem as well somewhere… Samira craves a nice double penetration now and again.
Were there any plans or might there be plans in the future for a version with a female main character (with or without a dick)?
A: Everything is possible as far as I’m concerned. If any artist wants to make a game with a female/futa main then I’m up for it and I guess Jessenia lends herself well as a female main.
I’m working on some personal projects now that will hopefully develop into real-time games instead of using pre-rendered graphics. That way it’s much easier to leave the choice of main character up to the player. With Unity’s Mecanim system you can map animations from one model to another and so you can reuse animations regardless of the model that is animated. Imagine having an animation of a guy lying back and getting a blowjob, with Unity I can swap out that guy for a girl with a dick at any time without having to completely redo the animation.
G: It is super hard to make something that won’t generate complaints. I get emails all the time like “Why don’t you do a comic where Jessenia grows another butthole and then gets double anal from a tigershark girl with 3 cocks?” and I reply “I am not sure I could technically do that at the moment.” To which they usually reply “FUCK YOU!! DIE! WHAT GOOD ARE YOU?” What I am trying to say, for this go round, I think we did what we can relate to. That being said, I do have a story line where Jessenia does get gangbanged by a bunch of shark dudes, probably after Dead Tide 7. I think it will end up being Dead Tide 9.
What is your favorite aspect of the game? What do you think fans of the game will enjoy the most?
A: Playing through the quests and getting to know the girls before you get to the sex is quite fun for a change. I hope that people enjoy the depth this adds to the characters and gives a bit of satisfaction when the sex scenes pop up.
The game is not for people looking for a quick wank, it takes some time to unlock all the scenes. If you’re looking to get off quick, then the Affect 3D store is full of great image sets and animations that deliver exactly that.
G: Yeah, I suggest Dead Tide 6: The Anal Forge for quick wanking. Or HZR’s Ass Effect.
This is your space. Anything you want your players to know or something you want to say to them?
A: I can say anything? Ok, first off, I hope everyone enjoys the game and has a lot of fun with it. It’s a bit of an experiment to make a game like this and I hope it turns out well.
Special thanks go to JD Wohl who tested the game endlessly. It would have been much harder to create this game without his continuous feedback.
If it’s alright with you guys, I would like to post a general call for more testers. I need as many people to try out the new games I make and it’s pretty hard to find good ones. If you’re interested, then please email [email protected]!
Finally I hope for a lot of feedback from anyone who plays the game, no matter if it’s positive or negative. Like I said, this game is a bit of an experiment and I hope to develop many more adult games in the future. Contact me through my site, Tumblr, Twitter or anywhere where you can find me and let me know how you like the game!
G: Absolutely! I hope you guys and gals end up dehydrated from fapping. I think depending on the popularity of the game and the girls…we might see them again in a Dead Tide title, or even their own spinoff.
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August 7, 2018gg
Epoch
November 5, 2016Congrats on the upcoming release, guys! Looking forward to playing it. 🙂
3DX Games
November 6, 2016Thanks, hope you enjoy it!