

Reviews

“Tidalis is a match-3 game that doesn’t feel tired or repetitive: I actually want to play it, which says something considering how many puzzle games I’ve reviewed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Tidalis is one of the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. Simply put, if you like puzzle games (and even if you usually don’t), you need to get Tidalis. Right now. Go!”

James Allen, Out of Eight PC Game Reviews (8/8 score)

“I can say with some authority that Tidalis stands apart… The bottom line is that Tidalis is a flexible, smart, refreshingly unique puzzle design, and it’s situated neatly into a large generous package. It’s far better than any mere puzzle game should be.”

Tom Chick, GameShark (GameShark Editor’s Choice Award, “A” Score)

Features

Puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new mechanic.

Two-player co-op and competitive play (both local and networked).

A wide selection of both action-oriented or brainteaser-like levels.

Casual-friendly adventure mode, hardcore-focused custom games and vs modes.

20+ game styles, and dozens of items and special blocks.

Rich, painterly art style and beautiful music.

Players can create and share whole new themes, levels, and adventures.

Options for colorblind players, players averse to lots of light and motion, and older computers.

A Block-based Puzzle Game

Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new “streams” mechanic. The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose. In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.

If this sounds simple, that’s because it is — you’ll be lining up lengthy chains within minutes. But you’ll be surprised how much brainpower it takes to set up combos of multiple chains, and the many brainteaser-style puzzles include some real stumpers. Tidalis has co-op and competitive multiplayer modes (both online and offline); action-oriented modes and timer-less brainteasers; a lengthy, casual-friendly adventure mode; twenty unique game modes providing innumerable twists to the basic gameplay; dozens of special blocks and items; and over fifty minutes of beautiful music to go with the painterly art.

In short, several games’ worth of content are built on top of this core mechanic, which you’ll quickly find to be as iconic as it is novel.

What Makes Tidalis Unique?

What happens when a notable indie strategy developer makes a puzzle game? We have no idea. Our first game happened to be a notable indie strategy game, but we’ve never considered ourselves tied to any particular genre. Truth is, we made Tidalis because we like puzzle games and we wanted to take our opportunity to innovate in that space. The “streams” mechanic employed by Tidalis is what makes it so unique — chain reactions with a dozen blocks are trivially easy to create. This makes the game really easy to get into, but also makes the creation of advanced multi-stage combos more challenging than in other block-based puzzlers. At an advanced level of play, it’s the difference between Chess and Checkers; with Tidalis in the hands of an expert, there are more variables to keep in mind as you set up truly elegant interactions. But never fear: the easier difficulty levels are quite relaxed, and our Zen mode provides a particularly no-rush style of gameplay. The core mechanics are so simple that the two-year-old daughter of one of our staff enjoys playing along with him. And we suppose it goes without saying that many of our mothers are hooked on it, too. Whether you’re just looking for a casual fun time, a deep and strategic puzzle experience, or a series of brain-bending puzzles, we’ve got you covered. About half of the five staff members working on this game are the hardcore puzzle types, and the other half have completely casual tastes. We’ve approached this with our usual attention to detail: the mechanics of the timing, chain merging, and other mechanics have been refined to a ridiculous degree to provide an optimal experience in all play styles.

Buy Direct From Arcen!

Tidalis

Block-based Puzzle Game. Add to Cart 4,41 €

System Requirements

COMPATIBLE OPERATING SYSTEMS

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Windows XP SP2 or later

Mac OSX Intel CPU and “Snow Leopard” 10.6 or later

Ubuntu 10.10 or later, although other unsupported distros may very well work

HARDWARE

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1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)

1.4Ghz CPU minimum, 1.8 Ghz recommended for background animation or multiplayer

600MB Hard Disk Space

Screen resolution at least 600px high, and 800px wide.

Internet Connection or LAN required for networked multiplayer

There are no particular graphics card requirements; anything from the last 5-8 years should be fine.

Demo (Unlockable Into Full Game With CD Key)

This zip archive contains the OSX, Windows, and Linux versions all in one package. More than 99% of the files are the same between all three operating systems, so this gives you the flexibility of having all three operating systems in one package without needing to download multiple large archives. To play the demo, simply unzip the archive into the location of your choice.

To run the game:

1. Windows: Run Tidalis.exe (this is 32bit)

2. OSX: Run Tidalis.app (this will run as 32bit or 64bit, depending on your OS).

3. Linux: Run TidalisLinux.x86 if you are on a 32bit OS, or TidalisLinux.x86_64 if you are on a 64bit OS.

That’s it! Note: if you have a CD key (NOT a steam key) for the game, then you can unlock this demo into the full version of the game.

Play Tidalis Lite In Your Browser!

The “lite” version of the game is a free, scaled-down web-based edition of the game. The lite version and the downloadable demo version have a lot of overlap in what they give away for free, but there’s quite a bit that is only in one version or the other. The lite version is the quickest, easiest way to dip your toes into the game: it’s only a 6.7mb download, assuming you already have the unity web player (which is tiny, anyway).