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

Back in 2018, Dutch indie studio HomeBear — a two-person team made up of partners Joshua van Kuilenburg and You Miichi — released NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin, a lovingly-made point-and-click adventure game which we awarded an 8/10 in our review.

It’s been a fair old while, but the duo is now gearing up for release of the sequel, Nairi: Rising Tide. Having last spoken to the team way back in the mists of time (March 2018), we recently caught up with Joshua van Kuilenburg once more via email to find out why it’s taken so long to return to Nairi’s world, and what’s changed since those distant days when Switch was but a year old…

Nintendo Life: It’s been a minute since Nairi: Tower of Shirin launched on Switch, so for players who aren’t familiar with the first game could you give a little background about Nairi as a character and where she finds herself after the events of the first game?

Joshua van Kuilenburg: In Tower of Shirin, Nairi found herself estranged from her family and her home, the wealthy and comfortable, yet politically charged, Rich District of Shirin. Born into a family of considerable stature, Nairi had lived a sheltered experience under the watchful eyes of her parents her entire life.

The events of the first game mostly focus on Nairi’s growth as she is forced to explore the Poor District of Shirin in order to find her way back home – with a bit of unexpected mystery on the side. Nairi finds herself more confident at the end of Tower of Shirin while also facing unexpected, grander issues.

Did work on Rising Tide begin immediately after the Tower of Shirin was wrapped up?

Yes, though we encountered some difficulties, both professionally and privately, which caused delay. Development of Rising Tide started in earnest after You, the artist, returned from Japan after providing hospice care for her mother, which she dedicated herself to for a couple of months. There were also some publishing and porting/localisation-related issues which postponed release by quite a bit. It has been a bit of a tumultuous period.

Thankfully, we weren’t dependent on crowdfunding this time around and could take our time to develop a more confident, polished game despite these setbacks.

How has reaction and feedback from Tower of Shirin affected the sequel? Will returning players be surprised by any differences, from a mechanical perspective?

We certainly took Tower of Shirin’s criticisms to heart and hope that players will notice the faster loading (especially on the Nintendo Switch), new map for easier navigation, improved hint systems and other such features. Characters and animations look much better, as well! Tower of Shirin’s ending was a common sticking point with players; we put particular effort into improving Rising Tide’s pacing and crafting a less abrupt, more satisfying ending.

The art style of the first game was one of its great strengths. Has your approach to the presentation of the world and its characters changed at all with the new game? Or is it more of a continuation?

Rising Tide represents a straightforward upgrade of what came before – the same art style, world, and characters, except everything looks a lot better. Proportions look much better, characters are more expressive; animations look more natural. When comparing both games side-by-side, the visual differences are quite stark.

Of course, Rising Tide also takes place in a different district of Shirin, which does have a very different sense of style and atmosphere compared to the slums featured in Tower of Shirin. Players can expect more varied and lush environments in Rising Tide!

Originally Rising Tide was announced for 2021, we believe. As with so many games, we imagine the pandemic was a significant factor in its prolonged development, but could you talk about how the dev timeline ended up panning out?

we more or less made ‘double the game’ compared to Tower of Shirin. It was quite a bit of work for a team of two.

In truth, the pandemic didn’t affect us much; me and my wife — the game’s artist — live and work inside the same apartment. And we didn’t get sick, thankfully. Aside from the issues I mentioned earlier, Rising Tide took as long as it did simply because we made little to no concessions. Unlike Tower of Shirin, no content was cut; in fact, we added more than initially planned to improve the game’s pacing. We wanted to raise NAIRI’s level of quality to a standard we were happy with, both for the sequel and future chapters.

For those wondering what that actually means, allow me to give a few specifics. Virtually all game systems have been cleaned up or entirely reprogrammed. The sequel has roughly 25% more hand-drawn backgrounds, all of which are more detailed than the first game (Tower of Shirin had quite a few ‘modular’ backgrounds designed to save us time). Rising Tide has 100% (!) more dialogue — a lot of it optional — due to the larger number of scenes, characters, and optional lore. The puzzle dungeons are easily twice as complex and twice as large as those featured in Tower of Shirin.

In short, we more or less made ‘double the game’ compared to Tower of Shirin. It was quite a bit of work for a team of two. Now that we’ve finally built a solid foundation that we’re happy with, we expect future chapters to roll out in a timelier fashion. Hopefully.

Tower of Shirin is only a few dollars/pounds/euro on the eShop and well worth picking up, but for players who missed it and might be interested in Rising Tide, how much do you think they’ll ‘miss’ in terms of callbacks with the characters and worldbuilding?

Thank you for the kind words. We did include an illustrated summary in Rising Tide which sums up Tower of Shirin, and are confident new players will find enjoyment in the sequel’s story, exploration and puzzles. However, Rising Tide does indeed include a lot of returning characters and references. Those familiar with Tower of Shirin will be better able to appreciate certain surprises and character arcs – as well as all the visual and gameplay improvements.

Of course, we’re biased, but for the best experience we recommend first getting acquainted with the world, lore and characters in Tower of Shirin before starting Rising Tide.

Since 2018 the Switch eShop has been flooded with all sorts of storybook-style, cute, cosy-looking games and many excellent point-and-click titles — it’s increasingly hard to stand out in the crowd. Is this something that concerns you, and what do you think sets Rising Tide apart?

We do worry about our game succeeding in a crowded market, of course, which is why we’ve focused on polishing Rising Tide. Our primary concern has been to produce the best game we can make, since that’s what we have the most control over.

In terms of standing out, we feel our art style remains eye-catching and our particular approach to gameplay — a blend of visual novels, point-and-clicks, and Zelda-esque dungeons — is quite unique. Everything considered, Tower of Shirin did quite well; we hope Rising Tide will grab the interest of players even more so!

Do you have further chapters in Nairi’s story planned? What’s next for HomeBear?

For now, we are 100% committed to giving NAIRI the most satisfying ending we possibly can. We know where we want things to go; what the ending looks like. All chapters being roughly equal in length, we expect there to be four chapters in total. We might opt for a single larger third chapter, however; we’re not entirely sure at this point, but we’re going to do whatever serves the narrative best. What I can say with certainty is that we’re already working on the third chapter.

Lovely! Finally, what games have you been playing and enjoying recently – on Switch or otherwise?

Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, we really enjoy playing survival-horror games together – my wife points out important loot, which I inevitably miss, while I handle the monsters. We’re currently playing through the Resident Evil 4 remake. On Switch, I’ve been enjoying The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (dungeons!) as well as Hyper Light Drifter.

Our thanks to Joshua. Nairi: Rising Tide launches on Switch on 14th November and is available for pre-order now with a 25% discount which puts it at $11.99 / £9.75 / €10.79.