Puzzles, brain-teasers, whatever you want to call them, have been around since at least the 200s BC. It’s a type of genre that many of us go towards for a slew of reasons. Because they’re fun, they engage our brains in problem-solving, or they make you feel accomplished in one area of your life. HomeBearStudio‘s newest game, Nairi: Rising Tide, will have you scratching your head as you figure out the answer to their ‘puzzle dungeon’. It’s the second chapter in the Nairi series, following 2018’s Nairi: Tower of Shirin. Picking up a few weeks after Tower of Shirin ended, you’ll explore the oasis city of Shirin, uncovering ruins and shady political conspiracies. With a team of friends, you play as Nairi, trying to find her family and get home. Does Rising Tide tickle your puzzle itch? Or, does it leave you scratching your head far too often?

Nairi: Rising Tide is a cute game that begins a little after the events of Tower of Shirin. You first play as Shiro who is recovering from an injury. After speaking to an ill carpenter, you find your way to the waterways. This area begins as your first mini ‘puzzle dungeon’. Once you’re out of the waterways, you then start to play as the star of the game, Nairi. Initially, her quest is to find her parents who are falsely imprisoned due to political corruption. She then finds herself in the middle of a great prophecy as a messenger of an ancient group of people; the Noorians spoke of a Great Storm coming, and Nairi’s task is to stop it. You’ll meet many characters throughout who are there to help or hinder your adventure. All the while, trying to figure out why is Nairi wrapped up in this mess.

As stated earlier, Rising Tide is a sequel, and admittedly, I didn’t realise that. At first, it is easy to piece things together. Of course, there are moments when a name will get mentioned that doesn’t make any sense. But for the most part, you can understand the base story. Though, there wasn’t any mention of a recap somewhere in the menus. Which, while helpful for those who didn’t play the first one, is great for those who need a refresher too. After a few days of playing, I noticed a button in the bottom-right-hand corner, and when clicked on it showed a recap of the previous game. This could’ve been more obvious, otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much confusion over the events. That, or offer it when you first start to play.

But even with that confusion, the storyline still makes sense. Yes, someone who played the first game will understand it to a greater degree than those who haven’t. But the plot itself is easy enough to follow. The story itself is, somewhat, rudimentary. In terms of themes like class struggles, monarchs, religious corruption, and political uprisings. This is not to say that it’s bad; games where political systems are at the forefront of a story can be intriguing. Nairi: Rising Tide’s themes are interesting, because how would a world of human-animal co-habitants work? There’s just a concern that the themes are all base-level and don’t really go into things deeper, aside from saying “having a dictator is bad”.

It’s rudimentary because it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of development in the world building around these themes, as if using them has become a cliché. It’s like when a Superhero film has villains who are fighting for a cause many agree with, but it’s bad to sympathise with a villain, so the writers make them blow up a building with civilians in it for no reason. There’s a need for depth, but it’s like you’re jumping into a puddle instead of a hole. Is the use of class divide, as the city Shirin’s district is divided into social classes, telling a well-rounded story? Or is it because it’s an easy theme to input with not much discussion? So far, Nairi has had two games telling the same story, but it feels surface-level, making it a disappointing endeavour that’s difficult to be invested in.

What about the puzzles? It became so frustrating playing through the game. Once you leave the first area of the middle district, you meet with a little chick called Pipi. Pipi can give you hints on what you need to find, or how to solve a section. But, you have to give it coins in return. With the hint system, you can click on the chick in your notebook and it’ll draw the hint. Sometimes, the hint might be for something two or three steps ahead, when you might still need the first one. Or vice versa, it might be the first step when you need the third. The hints are also not obvious. While a hint is not supposed to give you the answer, it just doesn’t make sense half the time.

Nairi needs a hammer, and the hints would direct you to the house you start in. But all the hint shows is the house and a hammer, not how to get it. After a while, you finally realise that you need to open up the basement floor so that the uncle of one of your companions can move down there. However, to get this, you need to recruit members to the Rising Tide (an activist group against the monarch). You’re not told who to recruit. Thus, it just feels like a lot of unnecessary fetch quests, that can irritate after a while. It’d be nice if there was an option for more help for people who really need it and are at a complete loss. Sometimes characters will point you in the right direction, but it’s only to suggest where to go next.

Nairi: Rising Tide offers two major puzzle dungeons. Puzzle dungeons are areas that have interconnected puzzles and the only way out is to solve them. Both of them are challenging. So if you found the short puzzles in the main world confusing and/or difficult, you haven’t seen anything yet. Yet, even with that said, there is the ability to skip the puzzles. Though the game itself mentions that they know the puzzle is difficult, it feels odd to acknowledge that. Having a better hint system might help those who want to finish it without feeling like they’re getting raked over the coals. Skipping the first puzzle left me confused about the story. However, I’m inclined to believe that I’d have the same feelings if I didn’t skip the puzzle too.

Sometimes in hidden object games, they might offer different sets of hint difficulty. Whether it’s to allow hints but have it on a timer, allow a certain amount of hints or none at all. While Rising Tide isn’t a hidden object game (or at least it doesn’t sell itself as one), it might benefit from using a system like that. As some of the hints can be simple, or so difficult, it leaves more questions than answers. Not only that, it’d be nice if there’s some way for the game to identify objects you need to find after some time, as some of the objects blend into the scene almost too well. When trying to find five pieces of a star, the first four were easy to find, whereas the last one became burdensome.

Lastly, accessibility. Rising Tide doesn’t have a lot of accessibility. Which is unfortunate. Though it is slightly understandable since it’s made by an indie team, it would be nice to see accessibility prioritised slightly. While the controls are simple, there isn’t a way to key bind in case you might need it. And much like the hint system, the settings aren’t explained with what each one does. Each setting has an icon next to it; some are quite simple: A rectangle with two arrows in the top and bottom corner indicates screen size and a globe icon with flags indicates language. But some make no sense. For the sound, there’s a music note, which is to assume music. But there’s an icon of a loudspeaker, but does that indicate the master volume? Sound effects? The last icon is a speech bubble, which is to assume it means dialogue volume.

Another small annoyance found is that there’s no option to look at the dialogue history unless you’re out of the conversation. At first, I assumed there was no history at all. It wasn’t until later when accessing the book Nairi has, there’s a button to view the history of the conversation. And while not necessarily accessibility focused, there’s no way to go to the pause menu while in a conversation. Which can become annoying after a while. Thus, you have to skip the discussion to get to the menu. Sometimes, you might skip non-important dialogue, or dialogue that goes on for too long. Experiences like this don’t need a lot of accessibility, but there are ways to make it better.

Nairi: Rising Tide is frustrating. This is disappointing because the art style is gorgeous, and the writing is funny. But, it’s the main puzzle mechanics that can get aggravating. A week after its release, HomeBearStudio ended up releasing a walkthrough for the two main puzzles that became a lifesaver when going through the second puzzle dungeon. But it does feel weird for the dev team themselves to release a walkthrough. This could mean that they are aware of the flaws, and future titles they work on will have updated mechanics; the cliffhanger implies a third game is planned, so hopefully they learn from Rising Tide’s mistakes.