‘Nairi: Rising Tide’ Dev On Standing Out In Switch’s Cosy Crowd Six Years On

Again in 2018, Dutch indie studio HomeBear — a two-person workforce made up of companions Joshua van Kuilenburg and You Miichi — launched NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin, a lovingly-made point-and-click journey recreation which we awarded an 8/10 in our evaluation.

It has been a good previous whereas, however the duo is now gearing up for launch of the sequel, Nairi: Rising Tide. Having final spoken to the workforce method again within the mists of time (March 2018), we just lately caught up with Joshua van Kuilenburg as soon as extra by way of e-mail to seek out out why it is taken so lengthy to return to Nairi’s world, and what’s modified since these distant days when Change was however a yr previous…

Nintendo Life: It’s been a minute since Nairi: Tower of Shirin launched on Change, so for gamers who aren’t acquainted with the primary recreation might you give a bit background about Nairi as a personality and the place she finds herself after the occasions of the primary recreation?

Joshua van Kuilenburg: In Tower of Shirin, Nairi discovered herself estranged from her household and her house, the rich and cozy, but politically charged, Wealthy District of Shirin. Born right into a household of appreciable stature, Nairi had lived a sheltered expertise below the watchful eyes of her dad and mom her whole life.

The occasions of the primary recreation principally concentrate on Nairi’s progress as she is pressured to discover the Poor District of Shirin as a way to discover her method again house – with a little bit of surprising thriller on the facet. Nairi finds herself extra assured on the finish of Tower of Shirin whereas additionally dealing with surprising, grander points.

Did work on Rising Tide start instantly after the Tower of Shirin was wrapped up?

Sure, although we encountered some difficulties, each professionally and privately, which precipitated delay. Improvement of Rising Tide began in earnest after You, the artist, returned from Japan after offering hospice look after her mom, which she devoted herself to for a few months. There have been additionally some publishing and porting/localisation-related points which postponed launch by fairly a bit. It has been a little bit of a tumultuous interval.

Fortunately, we weren’t depending on crowdfunding this time round and will take our time to develop a extra assured, polished recreation regardless of these setbacks.

How has response and suggestions from Tower of Shirin affected the sequel? Will returning gamers be shocked by any variations, from a mechanical perspective?

We actually took Tower of Shirin’s criticisms to coronary heart and hope that gamers will discover the sooner loading (particularly on the Nintendo Change), new map for simpler navigation, improved trace techniques and different such options. Characters and animations look significantly better, as nicely! Tower of Shirin’s ending was a typical sticking level with gamers; we put explicit effort into bettering Rising Tide’s pacing and crafting a much less abrupt, extra satisfying ending.

The artwork model of the primary recreation was certainly one of its nice strengths. Has your strategy to the presentation of the world and its characters modified in any respect with the brand new recreation? Or is it extra of a continuation?

Rising Tide represents an easy improve of what got here earlier than – the identical artwork model, world, and characters, besides all the things appears to be like quite a bit higher. Proportions look significantly better, characters are extra expressive; animations look extra pure. When evaluating each video games side-by-side, the visible variations are fairly stark.

In fact, Rising Tide additionally takes place in a special district of Shirin, which does have a really completely different sense of fashion and ambiance in comparison with the slums featured in Tower of Shirin. Gamers can anticipate extra diversified and luxurious environments in Rising Tide!

Initially Rising Tide was introduced for 2021, we consider. As with so many video games, we think about the pandemic was a big consider its extended growth, however might you discuss how the dev timeline ended up panning out?

we roughly made ‘double the sport’ in comparison with Tower of Shirin. It was fairly a bit of labor for a workforce of two.

In reality, the pandemic didn’t have an effect on us a lot; me and my spouse — the sport’s artist — stay and work inside the identical residence. And we didn’t get sick, fortunately. Except for the problems I discussed earlier, Rising Tide took so long as it did just because we made little to no concessions. Not like Tower of Shirin, no content material was reduce; in truth, we added greater than initially deliberate to enhance the sport’s pacing. We needed to boost NAIRI’s stage of high quality to a normal we have been proud of, each for the sequel and future chapters.

For these questioning what that really means, enable me to present just a few specifics. Just about all recreation techniques have been cleaned up or totally reprogrammed. The sequel has roughly 25% extra hand-drawn backgrounds, all of that are extra detailed than the primary recreation (Tower of Shirin had fairly just a few ‘modular’ backgrounds designed to save lots of us time). Rising Tide has 100% (!) extra dialogue — loads of it non-compulsory — as a result of bigger variety of scenes, characters, and non-compulsory lore. The puzzle dungeons are simply twice as complicated and twice as giant as these featured in Tower of Shirin.

Briefly, we roughly made ‘double the sport’ in comparison with Tower of Shirin. It was fairly a bit of labor for a workforce of two. Now that we’ve lastly constructed a strong basis that we’re proud of, we anticipate future chapters to roll out in a timelier style. Hopefully.

Tower of Shirin is only some {dollars}/kilos/euro on the eShop and nicely price selecting up, however for gamers who missed it and is likely to be focused on Rising Tide, how a lot do you assume they’ll ‘miss’ by way of callbacks with the characters and worldbuilding?

Thanks for the type phrases. We did embody an illustrated abstract in Rising Tide which sums up Tower of Shirin, and are assured new gamers will discover enjoyment within the sequel’s story, exploration and puzzles. Nevertheless, Rising Tide does certainly embody loads of returning characters and references. These acquainted with Tower of Shirin can be higher capable of recognize sure surprises and character arcs – in addition to all of the visible and gameplay enhancements.

In fact, we’re biased, however for one of the best expertise we advocate first getting acquainted with the world, lore and characters in Tower of Shirin earlier than beginning Rising Tide.

Since 2018 the Change eShop has been flooded with all kinds of storybook-style, cute, cosy-looking video games and plenty of wonderful point-and-click titles — it’s more and more exhausting to face out within the crowd. Is that this one thing that issues you, and what do you assume units Rising Tide aside?

We do fear about our recreation succeeding in a crowded market, after all, which is why we’ve centered on sharpening Rising Tide. Our main concern has been to provide one of the best recreation we are able to make, since that’s what we now have essentially the most management over.

When it comes to standing out, we really feel our artwork model stays eye-catching and our explicit strategy to gameplay — a mix of visible novels, point-and-clicks, and Zelda-esque dungeons — is kind of distinctive. Every thing thought-about, Tower of Shirin did fairly nicely; we hope Rising Tide will seize the curiosity of gamers much more so!

Do you’ve got additional chapters in Nairi’s story deliberate? What’s subsequent for HomeBear?

For now, we’re 100% dedicated to giving NAIRI essentially the most satisfying ending we presumably can. We all know the place we would like issues to go; what the ending appears to be like like. All chapters being roughly equal in size, we anticipate there to be 4 chapters in whole. We would go for a single bigger third chapter, nevertheless; we’re not totally certain at this level, however we’re going to do no matter serves the narrative finest. What I can say with certainty is that we’re already engaged on the third chapter.

Pretty! Lastly, what video games have you ever been enjoying and having fun with just lately – on Change or in any other case?

Maybe considerably unexpectedly, we actually get pleasure from enjoying survival-horror video games collectively – my spouse factors out vital loot, which I inevitably miss, whereas I deal with the monsters. We’re at present enjoying via the Resident Evil 4 remake. On Change, I’ve been having fun with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Knowledge (dungeons!) in addition to Hyper Mild Drifter.

Our because of Joshua. Nairi: Rising Tide launches on Change on 14th November and is on the market for pre-order now with a 25% low cost which places it at $11.99 / £9.75 / €10.79.