Back in 2018, the Switch’s touchscreen functionality made point-and-click games that were once best played on PC much more accessible to console gamers. In fact, many of the games on our list of the best Point And Click adventure games launched in the hybrid console’s second year – NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin among them. Six years later, Dutch developer HomeBear Studio continues the story with Nairi: Rising Tide. So is he up to the occasion? Done.
We’ll elaborate in a moment, but first a quick warning that mild spoilers for Tower Of Shirin lie ahead. The first installment is not a prerequisite; if you haven’t played it or need a recap, Rising Tide has an optional narrative section where Nairi tells the story of her previous adventure. However, Tower Of Shirin players will come equipped with useful lore knowledge.
Both games take place in Shirin, a city divided into rich, middle and poor districts. In the first game, the parents of Naira, a resident of the Rich District, were illegally arrested and she was forced to go into hiding – where she is now. When Rising Tide begins, we see the Tower Of Shirina story from the perspective of Shiro, whose father is on the Shirina Council with Nairi’s father. Later we return to Nairi’s point of view and the two children try to sneak back into the Rich District, encountering corrupt governments, uprisings, kidnappings and mysterious magical forces.
It’s an abbreviated version of the full story, which we feel is a bit hard to follow. The sequel introduces a lot of characters and subplots, but there isn’t much time to figure them all out. As the narrative tides shifted, we found that the best way to not drown in B stories was to stick with Nairi and Shiro’s quests while the other parts washed over us.
The characters’ long conversations give Rising Tides the feel of a visual novel. The dialogue is cute and contains many childish (bordering on cheesy) jokes, although it has more serious undertones with themes of corruption and class conflict. When traversing Shirin, the puzzles are light: you can complete a trading sequence, fill gaps, fix things with your tools, or deliver a lost item. You’ll need a keen eye to spot the various coins and items on the ground as you explore, as the elements that can interact often blend into the background.
Dungeons are where the puzzles really shine, and with only one or two characters present, dialogue becomes sparse. Puzzles are exciting and usually satisfying to solve. They’re not terribly frustrating, though they can be murky in a way that seems at odds with children’s humor. There are only three dungeons, but these multi-room, multi-level fortresses take up about half the game, with puzzles that allow you to run in and out of rooms and levels to pull a lever that connects to another floor or assemble several pieces (sometimes literally) . They often challenge you to think carefully and use every tool, tap every wall and every piece of furniture, even if it doesn’t look interactive. In one puzzle you spin the wheel to color different icons, in another you remember the sequence of the story, in the third you direct a laser beam to hit the ball.
Early on, you’ll gain access to the Hint Chick, which charges one coin for a puzzle hint in the form of a small drawing. It’s not cheating, we promise; the tips themselves can be quite cryptic. Hint Chick also allows you to skip dungeons entirely if you get too stuck and just want to continue the story. We’d love to brag that we completed our playthrough without needing hints, but unfortunately, many of the puzzles use logic that takes some getting used to or go into a tiny bit of lore. Often we would get our advice and mutter ‘Oh, I never would have understood that’. It’s clear that HomeBear paid attention to feedback (like our Tower Of Shirin review, which noted a tendency towards obtuse puzzles, which you could argue is a staple of the genre) with these tips – and we’re thankful they did.
Since Rising Tide is point and click, manual mode is your friend here. The screen is fast and although a few items look tiny, the touch area is wide. In docked mode, the menus can be troublesome with the controller, but for those who are partial to a large screen, the experience will not be diminished. It also offers the option of motion controls where you can point and click your Joy-Con devices towards the TV, as long as you’re okay with the lack of precision.
Game performance was a bit laggy and froze early when we paused the cut. We also experienced slow loading screens when moving between areas. Hopefully these bugs will be patched later, as they shouldn’t deter enthusiastic players.
The cleaner graphics and heightened colors will be a noticeable difference for existing fans, while newcomers will simply enjoy the hand-drawn watercolor aesthetic that depicts cute characters and classic environments. That, plus relatively minimal animation, reminded us of picture books.
The music fits so well you might not notice it. And we mean that in a good way, because it never gets in the way when you’re trying to absorb waves of text or concentrate on a mystifying puzzle. Upbeat marimbas in town, slow minor guitar plucks in dungeons, and satisfying chimes to solve puzzles all add up to an aurally pleasing experience.
Conclusion
Nairi: Rising Tide is a solid, if slightly inferior, sequel that expands on the world established in Tower Of Shirin. Some slow loading screens and hard to see items shouldn’t detract too much from your overall enjoyment, especially if you liked the first entry. Intricate puzzles are great, though you may need to shell out for hints. And while you may feel like you’re plodding through the story at times, there are enough narrative threads to pull you through to the suspenseful end. No spoilers, but in the final moments we already wanted to know what Nairi, Shiro and their friends were up to next.
