In 2018, Dutch indie studio HomeBear — a two-man team made up of partners Joshua van Kuilenburg and You Miichi — released NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin, a lovingly crafted point-and-click adventure game that we awarded 8/10 in our review.
It’s been a while, but the duo is now gearing up to release the sequel, Nairi: Rising Tide. Having last spoken to the team long ago in the mists of time (March 2018), we recently caught up with Joshua van Kuilenburg via email once more to find out why it took so long to return to Naira’s world and what has changed since those distant days when the Switch was only a year old…
Nintendo Life: It’s been a minute since Nairi: Tower of Shirin launched on Switch, so for players unfamiliar with the first game, can you give a little background on Nairi as a character and where she is after the events of the first game?
Joshua van Kuilenburg: In Tower of Shirin, Nairi finds herself estranged from her family and her home, the rich and comfortable, but politically charged, affluent district of Shirin. Born into a prominent family, Nairi lived her whole life protected under the watchful eyes of her parents.
The events of the first game mostly focus on Naira’s growth as she is forced to explore the impoverished district of Shirin to find her way home – with a little unexpected mystery on the side. Nairi has more confidence at the end of Tower of Shirin while also facing unexpected, bigger problems.
Did work on Rising Tide start immediately after Tower of Shirin wrapped?
Yes, although we encountered some difficulties, both business and personal, which caused the delay. The development of Rising Tide began in earnest after you, the artist, returned from Japan after hospice care for your mother, to whom she devoted herself for several months. There were also some publishing and porting/localization issues that delayed the release quite a bit. It was a somewhat tumultuous period.
Fortunately, we weren’t dependent on crowdfunding this time around and were able to take the time to develop a safer, more polished game despite these setbacks.
How did the reaction and feedback from Tower of Shirin affect the sequel? Will returning players be surprised by any differences, from a mechanical perspective?
We certainly took the Tower of Shirin reviews to heart and hope players will notice faster loading times (especially on Nintendo Switch), a new map for easier navigation, improved hint systems and other such features. The characters and animations look much better too! The Tower of Shirin ending was a common sticking point with players; we’ve put a lot of effort into improving the pacing of Rising Tide and creating a less abrupt and 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 in any way with the new game? Or is it more of a sequel?
Rising Tide is a direct upgrade to what came before – the same art style, world and characters, except everything looks a lot better. The proportions look much better, the characters are more expressive; animations look more natural. Comparing both games side by side, the visual differences are quite large.
Of course, Rising Tide also takes place in another district of Shirin, which has a very different sense of style and atmosphere compared to the slums of Tower of Shirin. Players can expect a more diverse and lush environment in Rising Tide!
We believe Rising Tide was originally announced for 2021. As with many games, we imagine the pandemic was a significant factor in their prolonged development, but can you talk about how the timeline for the developers ended up turning out?
we more or less made a ‘double game’ compared to Tower of Shirin. It was quite a bit of work for a team of two.
True, the pandemic did not affect us too much; me and my wife — a game artist — live and work in the same apartment. And we didn’t get sick, luckily. Aside from the problems I mentioned earlier, Rising Tide lasted so long because we made little or no concessions. Unlike Tower of Shirin, no content was cut; in fact, we added more than originally planned to improve the pace of the game. We wanted to raise the quality level of NAIRI to a standard we were happy with, both for the sequel and for future chapters.
For those wondering what this actually means, let me provide a few details. Almost all of the game’s systems have been cleaned up or completely reprogrammed. The sequel has roughly 25% more hand-drawn backgrounds, which are all more detailed than the first game (Tower of Shirin had plenty of ‘modular’ backgrounds designed to save us time). Rising Tide has 100% (!) more dialogue — much of it optional — due to more scenes, characters, and optional lore. The dungeon puzzles are easily twice as complex and twice as large as those presented 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 launch in a shorter fashion. Hopefully.
Tower of Shirin is only a few bucks/pounds/dollars on the eShop and well worth buying, but for players who missed out and might be interested in Rising Tide, how much do you think they’ll be ‘missing out’ in terms of character and world building callbacks ?
Thank you for your kind words. We’ve included an illustrated summary in Rising Tide that summarizes Tower of Shirin, and we’re confident that new players will find enjoyment in the sequel’s story, exploration, and puzzles. However, Rising Tide does include a lot of returning characters and references. Those familiar with Tower of Shirin will be able to better 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 that you familiarize yourself with the world, lore, and characters in Tower of Shirin first before starting Rising Tide.
As of 2018, the Switch eShop has been flooded with all kinds of cute, enjoyable, storybook-style games and many excellent clicker titles — it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. Is that something that worries you and makes Rising Tide stand out?
We worry about whether our game will do well in a crowded market, of course, which is why we’ve focused on polishing Rising Tide. Our primary concern was to produce the best game we could, since that’s what we have the most control over.
In terms of highlights, we think our art style remains appealing, and our particular approach to gameplay – a mix of visual novels, point-and-click, and Zelda-style dungeon crawling – is quite unique. Overall, Tower of Shirin did pretty well; we hope that Rising Tide will make players even more interested!
Do you have any further chapters of Nairi’s story planned? What’s next for HomeBear?
For now, we are 100% committed to providing NAIRI with the most satisfactory ending we can. We know where we want things to go; what the end looks like. Since all the chapters are roughly the same length, we expect there to be four chapters in total. However, we could opt for a larger third chapter; we’re not entirely sure at this point, but we’ll do what best serves the narrative. what i it can we can safely say that we are already working on the third chapter.
Beautiful! 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 the important loot that I inevitably miss while dealing with monsters. We are currently playing through Resident Evil 4 remake. On Switch I enjoyed 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 November 14th and is available to pre-order now with a 25% discount which is $11.99 / £9.75 / 10.79 dollars.
