Storms
Every hour or so a storm builds overhead. The light goes grey, the shallows turn murky and cold, catching a breath at the surface takes more than twice as long, and lightning flashes through the top of the sea before the thunder rolls in.
Born small. Grow into the monster.
Everyone starts as a newborn on one shared official server: a few metres long, hungry, and on the menu. Eat what you can catch or scavenge, keep warm, breathe if you breathe air, and finish tasks to grow through juvenile and sub-adult to adult.
Other players are out there too, and so are the wild hunters: sharks that follow blood for hundreds of metres, packs that take what one couldn't, and deep things that rise at night. Bites tear real wounds and bleed; carcasses are torn apart chunk by chunk until only bones are left.
Die and that animal is gone. Live long enough and you become what the others fear, and when your animal is grown you can open a nest and let new players be born beside you.
Seven animals to play
Mosasaurus
Brawler · 15 m
Apex grappler. Crushing bites that cut through armour, and prey small enough is swallowed whole.
Megalodon
Ambusher · 15 m
Strikes hardest from below, smells blood from 600 m and feels heartbeats close by, but must keep swimming to breathe.
Kronosaurus
Heavyweight · 10.5 m
A skull over two metres long. Grabs big prey and twists chunks off it.
Ichthyosaurus
Skirmisher · 5 m
Fast, with the biggest eyes of any animal: sees furthest in the dark and dives deepest. Quicker in a pod.
Elasmosaurus
Fisher · 10 m
A neck over half its length. Strikes from further off than anything else, and fish don't notice its head until it's among them.
Archelon
Survivor · 4.5 m
A giant sea turtle. The shell shrugs off bites from above and behind, and resting on the seabed hides it from sharks.
Nanaimoteuthis
Kraken · 8 m
A giant finned octopus. Latches onto animals far bigger than itself and rides them while its beak bites.
The sea
Low-light vision
The deep stays dark: a few hundred metres down there's no light left at all. Open your eyes to it and everything solid within their range stands out in faint outlines, further for the big-eyed ichthyosaur than for a turtle.
Adaptations
At each new stage of life choose one of three traits real marine reptiles and sharks evolved: thicker hide, serrated teeth, deeper lungs, blubber, a keener nose. Small edges, so two adults of a kind fight differently.
Senses
Every species has its own sense on Q, from the real animal. What it finds lights up for a few seconds, or it tells you there's nothing.
- Electric senseMegalodonEvery heartbeat within 70 m, hidden or not; the bleeding ones throb red.
- Taste the waterMosasaurusThe nearest animals and the nearest carcass, by their taste.
- Long-range smellKronosaurusBlood and dead meat half a kilometre off, exactly placed.
- Magnetic senseArchelonThe way to kelp, to warm water, and away from what hunts it.
The surface
Long swells roll overhead, about a metre high on a calm day and three in a storm. Air-breathers ride them to breathe, and anything fast enough can breach clean out of the water, leaving rings spreading behind.
Install
- Download the zip for your system from the top of this page.
- Unzip it into a folder of its own that you can write to, like Downloads or Documents (not Program Files), so the game can update itself there.
- Run BloodTide. On Windows, SmartScreen may warn that the app isn't recognised, because the build isn't signed: choose More info, then Run anyway. On Linux, make
BloodTide.x86_64executable if it isn't. - Press Play. You join the official server. From then on the game checks for updates whenever its menu opens and installs them itself.
Already playing a version older than 0.9.20? Download it here one last time; after that it keeps itself up to date.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard and mouse | Controller |
|---|---|---|
| Point your animal | Mouse | Right stick |
| Swim forward | W | Left stick up |
| Turn left / right | A / D | Left stick |
| Slide up / down | Space / Ctrl | A / B |
| Sprint | Shift | RT |
| Bite | Left click | X |
| Ability | Right click | Y |
| Eat (hold) | E | RB |
| Grab, carry, let go | F | D-pad up |
| Sense | Q | LT |
| Call | R | LB |
| Low-light vision | N | D-pad left |
| Choose an adaptation | G | D-pad right |
| Auto-swim | X | Left stick click |
| First / third person | V | |
| Free look | Alt (hold) | Right stick click |
| Tasks and position | Tab (hold) | Back |
| Full map | M | |
| Chat | Enter | |
| Menu | Esc | Start |
What you need
- SystemWindows 10 or 11 (64-bit), or a modern 64-bit Linux
- GraphicsA desktop graphics card that supports Vulkan
- DiskAbout 250 MB
- NetworkAn internet connection for the official server (Practice offline, on the main menu, runs without one)