Why Hollow Tide Stuck With Me

I finished Hollow Tide in an evening and a half, and I've thought about it more than games that took me forty hours. It's a diving adventure through a flooded town, and it tells its whole story through the environment — notes, objects, the way the light falls.

The mechanics are simple: you drift, you manage a modest air meter, you solve puzzles rooted in the world around you. Nothing here needs a guide, which I mean as praise. The puzzles are clever without being cruel.

What elevates it is the sound. I almost played it on speaker and I'm glad I switched to headphones — the muffled underwater audio does half the emotional work. There's a moment near the end that lands entirely because of a sound cue.

If you want something meaningful that respects your time, this is it. Short games are underrated, and Hollow Tide is a good argument for why.