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House of Tides
A first-person psychological sci-fi horror game set inside a forgotten theatre beneath a drowned world.

Press Kit Download

Steam

Kickstarter

Trailer

Contact

[email protected]

Quick Facts

TITLE
House of Tides

DEVELOPER
Blur Garden

PUBLISHER
Blur Garden

CREATOR AND DIRECTOR
Elio Ruiz

GENRE
First-person psychological sci-fi horror

FULL-GAME LENGTH
3–5 hours

PLAYABLE DEMO
Night Shift — planned for October 2026

KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN
October 2026

PLATFORM
Windows PC / Steam

RELEASE DATE
To be announced

PLAYERS
Single-player

ENGINE
Unreal Engine 5

LANGUAGES
English and Spanish planned

LOCATION
Tokyo, Japan

GAME WEBSITE
houseoftidesgame.com

STEAM
Go to Steam Page

KICKSTARTER
Go to Prelaunch Page on Kickstarter

PRESS CONTACT
[email protected]

Descriptions

OFFICIAL ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION

A first-person psychological sci-fi horror game set inside a forgotten theatre beneath a drowned world.

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Descend into a shifting labyrinth of memories, imagined lives and fractured identities in this first-person psychological sci-fi horror game about grief, guilt and obsession, set inside a forgotten theatre beneath a drowned world.

MEDIUM DESCRIPTION

House of Tides is a first-person psychological sci-fi horror game set inside a forgotten theatre beneath a drowned world.

Follow an anomalous signal into a shifting labyrinth shaped by memories, imagined lives and fractured identities. Explore unstable spaces, examine objects, interact with digital systems and track sounds as the theatre gradually begins to arrange itself around what it finds in you.

The experience is built around exploration, perception, diegetic interaction, sound-driven tension and narrative discovery, without a traditional combat focus.

LONG DESCRIPTION

A forgotten theatre lies beneath a drowned world.

House of Tides is a first-person psychological sci-fi horror game set inside a shifting labyrinth of memories, imagined lives and fractured identities.

Follow an anomalous signal into a theatre that has survived for centuries below the ocean. Its active systems open its spaces into fragments of performances, memories, imagined lives, damaged archives and worlds preserved beyond their time.

The deeper you descend, the more the theatre begins to shape itself around what it finds in you.

House of Tides is built around exploration, perception, sound, diegetic interaction and narrative discovery. Move through shifting spaces, examine objects, read fragments, interact with digital systems, track sounds and find a way out.

Horror develops through atmosphere, sensory dissonance, silence, spatial distortion, intimate memories and the gradual collapse between fiction and reality. Sound guides attention, creates tension and reveals meaning through the environment. Some moments are designed to be understood through listening before they are understood through image.

Developed by Blur Garden, House of Tides is planned as a focused 3–5 hour single-player experience for Windows PC via Steam.

NIGHT SHIFT — VERTICAL SLICE DESCRIPTION

Night Shift is a self-contained playable story set within the world of House of Tides.

You play as a night security guard completing a routine shift inside a museum closed to the public. After an incident in a temporary exhibition, the building begins to lose its sense of routine and familiar spaces start to arrange themselves around moments from your own life.

Night Shift is not an excerpt from the main storyline, and the museum is not the central setting of House of Tides. It is a separate short experience designed to demonstrate the atmosphere, pacing, visual language, diegetic interaction, environmental storytelling and sound-driven tension planned for the full game.

Approximate duration: 15 minutes.
Planned availability: October 2026.

PUBLIC POSITIONING NOTE

Please describe House of Tides as a first-person psychological sci-fi horror game.

Please do not position it primarily as survival horror, action horror, a puzzle game, an immersive sim, an underwater exploration game or a traditional combat-focused experience.

Key Features

• First-person psychological sci-fi horror set inside a forgotten theatre beneath a drowned world.
• A shifting labyrinth of memories, imagined lives, and fractured identities.
• Gameplay focused on exploration, atmosphere, perception, sound, and narrative discovery.
• Diegetic interaction with digital systems, recordings, documents, objects, memories and environmental fragments.
• Surreal spaces shaped by theatrical works, damaged memories, fictional characters, and unstable projections.
• Sound-driven tension built through distant voices, underwater distortions, echoes, recordings, music, breathing, and silence.
• A compact authored horror experience without a traditional combat focus.

Coverage Angles

A SOLO-DEVELOPED HORROR PROJECT FROM TOKYO
House of Tides is created by Elio Ruiz, a Spanish solo game developer, 3D artist and actor based in Tokyo, whose background combines more than fifteen years of professional theatre with 3D art and CG production for film and games.

FROM THEATRE TO INTERACTIVE HORROR
Elio's background in acting, staging and dramaturgy informs the game's approach to space, performance, rhythm, presence and environmental storytelling.

PLAY BEFORE YOU PLEDGE
The Kickstarter campaign is planned alongside Night Shift, a self-contained playable vertical slice designed to give players and press a direct sense of the project's atmosphere, interaction and production direction.

AN INDEPENDENT, HUMAN-MADE PRODUCTION
House of Tides is being developed as an authored independent project. Generative AI is not used to produce final in-game art, writing, voices, music, animation, environments or narrative content.

Media Assets

The downloadable press kit includes:

• Screenshots
• Key art
• Logo files
• Trailer files
• Short video montages
• Game descriptions
• Key features
• Quick facts
• Suggested coverage angles
• Creator and studio information
• Human-made project statement
• Press and contact information

All supplied assets may be used for editorial, press, creator, and promotional coverage of House of Tides and Blur Garden.

Please preserve the supplied logos and their proportions, and avoid adding misleading text or altering key art in ways that misrepresent the original material. Reasonable cropping, resizing, compression, and other technical adjustments required for editorial publication are permitted.

The supplied materials may not be used to imply endorsement, partnership, sponsorship, or other affiliation with Blur Garden or House of Tides without prior written permission.

Official Reveal Trailer

Watch the trailer on YouTube:

Trailer file

Format: MP4 (H.264)
Resolution: 4K
Length: 1:40
File Size: 952 MB

Screenshots

Logos & Key Art

Clips

Review & Creator Build Requests

A playable vertical slice of House of Tides is planned for campaign and preview purposes.

Journalists, streamers, YouTubers, curators, and content creators can request access using the form below.

Please include:

• Name
• Outlet / channel
• Website or channel link
• Email
• Country / region
• Type of coverage
• Expected publication or video date
• Whether you need embargo information
• Any technical requirements

Access is provided at Blur Garden’s discretion. Builds may be subject to embargo, recording guidance, or technical limitations depending on the stage of development.

Interviews

Interview requests with Elio are welcome.

Possible topics include:

• House of Tides
• Solo development
• Psychological horror
• Theatre and game design
• Sound-driven narrative
• Human-made creative production
• Independent development from Tokyo

For interviews, contact:
[email protected]

Human-Made Project Statement

House of Tides is being created as a human-made game.

I do not use generative AI to produce final in-game art, writing, voices, music, animation, environments, or narrative content. The final creative work of this project is authored, shaped, and built by human hands.

For me, generative tools may be useful only for early desk research, organization, or reference exploration, but not as a replacement for authored work, credited artists, or final creative production.

This matters especially for a game about memory, identity, performance, and what remains of us.

Contact

For press, creator requests, interviews, review access, or additional materials:

Elio Ruiz / Blur Garden
[email protected]

Website: blurgarden.com

Game Website: houseoftidesgame.com

Steam: Go to Steam Page

Kickstarter: Go to Prelaunch Page on Kickstarter

YouTube: Blur Garden on Youtube

X: House of Tides on X

Instagram: Blur Garden on Instagram

Downloads

Complete Press Kit

Screenshots

Logos & Key Art

Trailer

Clips

Fact Sheet

Text Materials