Tide Up is a surreal Explorer Horror game by Gustav, creator of Leave, Stygian, and Cat in the Box, and uses a similar approach to its story. Like Gustav's previous game, you play as a namable Girl who wakes up trapped in a forest, and must find her way back home. She meets a spider who tells her that she will need to find Pearls scattered around the world to escape. Along the way, she finds her sister sitting on a bench — or at least, something with the appearance of her sister. She offers to help the girl find her way through the world and back home.
But there is one odd thing — her sister should be dead...
Similarly to Gustav's other games, Tide Up uses a surreal approach to its storytelling, leaving exactly what is going on in a state of ambiguity. There are also several secrets and Easter Eggs to find which will shine a bit more light on the Girl's situation. In addition, the game also has four boss battles at different points in the game.
This game contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: The Girl and her half-sister grew up with a mother who would take one of them at a time and lock them in the basement closet, torturing them. The abuse got so bad it drove the sister to suicide.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The second boss, the evil sister, is a traditional “run and escape the monster” boss typical of Explorer Horror.
- Antepiece: There are various doors with plasters that you need to use the hammer to smash through, taking the form of a minigame where the cursor will automatically move in a circle and you have to press the button when it reaches the red part. The first three doors let you try again as many times as you need in a safe environment so you can get used to doing it, which you will need to do as the third boss requires you to do this multiple times while also keeping the boss (a mass of eyeballs) from fully opening any of the three elevator doors and getting through.
- Background Boss: The final boss, the evil sister, stays in the background of the arena; the real danger is the enemies and obstacles in the way, though you do need to expose and attack the head, her weak point.
- Big Bad: The entity trapping the Girl inside the strange world is the embodiment of her guilt and self-blame over her sister's suicide, taking the form of her sister and trying to take revenge on her by keeping her trapped in her nightmares.
- Driven to Suicide: The Girl's sister is all but stated to have hung herself after she couldn't take their mother's mistreatment anymore. The Bad Ending ambiguously implies that the Girl, consumed with guilt for asking her sister to keep her company instead of letting her leave the abuse, joins her.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Abusive Mom of the Girl and her sister, who appears in the nightmare in the form of a big bloody pig head, never directly antagonizes the Girl, but her abuse drove the sister to suicide and left the Girl blaming herself for it, the feeling of guilt being what she struggles with in the game.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: The entire game turns out to be a nightmare the unnamed protagonist is having over her believing that she caused her sister to hang herself by along her to not pave their abusive mother so the protagonist wouldn't have to bear it alone.
- Hanging Around: Several bits of imagery involving this suggests this is how the Girl's sister killed herself.
- It's All My Fault: The Girl blames herself for her sister hanging herself, as she begged the sister to not leave the house so she wouldn't have to suffer under her Abusive Mom alone, only for the abuse to get so bad that the sister decided she could not take it anymore. The self-blame takes the form of a Mental Monster who resembles her sister.
- Murderous Mannequin: The most common enemy type is a mannequin with a bloody smile that will run several steps, stop for a few seconds, and then run again in a loop. The second area also has several harmless NPC mannequins.
- One-Time Dungeon: The Girl's house in the second area can only be visited once, and when completed cannot be returned to, potentially costing you two Pearls hidden inside.
- One-Winged Angel: The evil version of the sister apparition transforms into a ghastly giant woman for the final battle, though she summons minions to attack rather than attacking herself.
- Railroading: Even though the sister tells you that you can go to either the mom's or dad's areas, the latter is only accessible by a boat that requires a ticket which can only be found by exploring the former, forcing you to do the mom's area first.
- Sinister Swine: The Girl's Abusive Mom takes the form of a giant, bloody pig head in the strange world of her nightmares, where she greedily demands to be fed coins and will berate the Girl should she be given anything else. In addition, giving her the pearls leads to the Bad Ending.
- Surreal Horror: Being that the game takes place in a nightmare, there is a fair amount of surreal imagery.
- Warmup Boss: The knight, the boss of the Factory, is a slow enemy that chases you around and is beaten simply by turning three valves around the arena to harm it.
- Wicked Stepmother: The Girl's mom is indicated to be this, as the Girl's sister implies with one comment that she is a half-sister from the man the mother remarried, and said mother subjected her to the same basement closet beatings that she did to the Girl, eventually driving the sister to hang herself.
