Between Tides

Between Tides is one of those stories that sits in your chest after you close it. The opening — stepping off the ferry, tying a bag, feeling like a returned exile — is written with a tactile precision that hooked me immediately. The municipal wheel and its humming crystal are more than gadgets; they’re characters in their own right. I loved the scene where the bell tolls softly and people look away, as if memory itself were an etiquette. The vendor’s line, “The wheel measures what we cannot keep,” stayed with me like a line of poetry. As interactive fiction, the moral choices feel meaningful: do you sacrifice a memory, smash the archive, or rewire the whole system? Each option carried real emotional weight in the scenes that followed (especially the quiet town-square confrontations). The prose is taut and salt-stung, just like the description promises. If you like small-town mysteries with speculative teeth and choices that sting, this is a lovely, melancholy ride.

I appreciated the restraint in the storytelling here. The author trusts readers to notice the small things: the stone with the carved fish, the smith’s sign, the bakery’s forever-open window. Those details build Hallowmere without exposition clutter. The wheel is beautifully imagined — bronze bands, glass prisms, a crystal that hums like a hidden heart — and the writing gives it mechanical legitimacy while keeping its mystique. On the interactive side, the dilemma at the center (sacrifice a memory, shatter the archive, or rewire the system) is structurally sound and thematically resonant. Choices feel calibrated to reveal moral character rather than just alter plot beats. A couple of transitions could be tightened, but overall the pacing maintains that taut, salt-stung mood the blurb promises. Neat work for readers who like thinking through consequences rather than button-mashing branching paths.

This story made me ache in the best way. I kept picturing the child with the kite snapping at its tail and adults averting their eyes when the bell tolled — such a small, human tableau that says so much about a town that buries its days. The scene where the protagonist first stands before the wheel and feels their breath catch? Chef’s kiss. It’s cinematic without hogging the stage. I’m a sucker for ethical choices in interactive fiction, and the three options here are terrific because none are obviously ‘right.’ I honestly spent a long time mentally replaying what I would lose if I chose to sacrifice a memory. The writing leans lyrical at times, but it never forgets to be clear about stakes. Loved it 😊

Between Tides nails atmosphere and moral nuance. The writing is economical but evocative: the ferry arrival, the town’s slowed rhythm, the vendor’s ingrained civility — all of it adds up to a place you can smell. The wheel-as-archive is a clever speculative device; the crystal that hums like a heart is an image I kept coming back to. Mechanically, the interactive choices are well-integrated into the narrative. I admired how rewiring the system isn’t presented as a tech puzzle alone but as a deeply ethical act with social consequences. The most powerful scenes are small reckonings — a neighbor’s confession, a returned notebook found in a drawer — that show what’s at stake for ordinary people. This is the kind of IF that rewards slow reading and multiple playthroughs.

I wanted to love this more than I did. The setting is gorgeous — the quay, the bell, the humming crystal — and there are moments of real poignancy (the protagonist revisiting the smith’s sign is nicely done). But the central mystery felt a touch predictable to me: the machinery of the plot, especially the town’s split between secrecy and repair, follows familiar beats from other memory-themed stories. The choices are interesting in concept, but I found the consequences a little thin in execution. Rewiring the system, for example, sounded like it would lead to messy social fallout, but the scenes that follow skirted the worst of that fallout and leaned toward neat moral closure. Still, if you prize atmosphere and quiet human scenes over shocking twists, there’s much to appreciate here.

I admire the ambition: a clocksmith returning to a coastal town that literally stores days in crystal is a compelling premise. Unfortunately, the delivery sometimes trips over itself. The prose is evocative in fits — the bell toll, the vendor’s line, the crystal’s hum — but there are stretches where the narrative slows too much and the interactive choices start to feel like variations on the same moral note. My biggest issue was with character motivation. Why does the protagonist, who rehearsed dozens of comebacks, fall into the caretaker role so readily? There are hints in the old notebooks, but I wanted clearer causal beats tying their past to their willingness to tinker with the wheel. Also, a couple of technical elements (how the wheel actually stores memory, the social mechanics of the archive) are glossed over; I wanted more rigor there. Worth reading for the mood, but I left wanting more grit and consequence.

Short and sharp: this story is mood done right. That opening line about the sea wind being ‘sharp and civil as if it has business to settle’ is one of those perfect sentences you underline in your head. There’s a steady, saline melancholy throughout — people smoothing their faces on the quay, the bell that marks a memory you can’t name — and the wheel with its bronze bands and humming crystal is such a good central image. The interactive choices are meaningful rather than gimmicky. Deciding whether to shatter the archive or rewire things forces you to reckon with what memories are worth keeping and at what cost. I replayed one branch to see how different townspeople reacted; the little human reckonings (a vendor’s confession, a child’s stubborn kite) are what stick. Highly recommended if you like atmosphere over action and ethical complexity over easy resolutions.