TidalForged Studios: Creating a digital home for The Sea’s Verdict and its community

TidalForged Studios is part of Realight Studios in New Zealand and is developing The Sea’s Verdict, a solo and cooperative action role playing game set in a pirate inspired mythological world.

The team was already building interest through social media and its growing community, but there was no dedicated online home for the game.

With an important funding application approaching, TidalForged needed a more complete digital presence. Somewhere people could understand the project, meet the studio behind it and stay involved as development continued.

Backed by Humans was brought in to help create that presence in time for the submission.

Preparing for an important funding application

TidalForged Studios was preparing an application to the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence, known as CODE, which supports the growth of the country’s game development industry.

The studio already had an active presence across Reddit, Discord and LinkedIn, but there was no central place bringing that activity together.

For someone discovering TidalForged for the first time, there needed to be an easy way to understand the studio, explore The Sea’s Verdict and see the community forming around it.

The funding deadline also gave the work a clear focus. We agreed which parts would make the most useful difference for the application and concentrated the first release around those priorities.

Creating a home for The Sea’s Verdict

We created a dedicated TidalForged Studios website that brings the team, the game and its world together in one place.

The site introduces The Sea’s Verdict, giving visitors a clearer sense of its atmosphere and the people creating it. It also gives TidalForged somewhere consistent to send people discovering the game through social media, community discussions or future promotion.

For the funding application, the website provided a more complete picture of the studio and its work than social channels could offer alone.

Giving supporters a clear next step

Interest in the game was already growing, so the website needed to do more than explain the project.

Visitors can become supporters directly through the site, and have already done so, giving TidalForged a way to continue that relationship through news, development updates and supporter benefits.

Connecting TidalForged into Realight Studios

TidalForged sits within its parent Realight Studios, so the supporter journey was designed to connect into the wider Realight setup.

When somebody signs up or interacts with TidalForged, that activity can feed into the shared system used across Realight and its projects.

This means TidalForged can keep its own identity and public experience while supporter information is managed centrally as a part of the wider organisation.

Delivered in time for the submission

The agreed work was completed in time for TidalForged Studios to use the new website as part of its CODE funding submission.

By that point, the studio had an online presence, a dedicated home for The Sea’s Verdict and a working supporter journey that people were using.

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We work with businesses to understand what their online presence needs to achieve, then build around that purpose.

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Footnote: Artificial intelligence has been used to help generate some of the imagery for this article. Realight Studios, TidalForged Studios and The Sea’s Verdict do not use AI generated imagery.