GT INTERACTIVE PRESS RELEASE
7.8.98
 
Tides Of War

Format: PC 
SRP: £TBA
Release: 4th Of September 

“All hands on deck!”

Devil’s Thumb Entertainment and GT Interactive have teamed up to bring us a unique twist on real-time strategy games for the PC Platform.  “Tides of War” employs a unique resource management system combined with complex missions and gameplay.  Devil’s Thumb Entertainment is going to take the genre to a whole new level.  

"For a time I wandered the lands, through the deserts of Tarika, across the mountainous regions of inner Bengal. 'Twas not a maiden that sent me on my journey, the dreams of wealth never guided my steps. I searched for the people whom I could learn to call my brethren. My travels took me nowhere, revealing not what I was looking for, nor whom. But, with as many steps as I took, I finally came to the sea and she stopped me, washing up around ankles. My search was over, for it was there that I found my brethren. Aboard the great ships of wood, sails full and stretched taut with the ocean wind, they battled honorably with steel and fire, fighting for their kings, their countries, their homes.  It was upon these great vessels of ocean that I found the life with my brethren”.

That’s all well and pretty, but where are the cannons and how do I fire them?

Tides Of War, the exciting new sailing action adventure game from Devil’s Thumb Entertainment and GT Interactive, features 3D animated ships and an entire world of intrigue and adventure to explore.  Tides Of War will set new standards for naval combat. Tides Of War will bring gloriously colourful 32-bit battles to your screen and entertain and excite you as the story unfolds through a series of movies between each level.

Features:

•	Mission-based game of sailing ship combat and exploration. 
•	Start as a  low-ranking officer of a modest sailing ship and with successful completion of missions progress through the ranks and sail better ships.
•	Micro-manage your own ship, concern yourself with issues such as what weapons are active, what the crew is eating and how much, what the lengths of their shifts are, their morale, who is controlling what portion of the ship or how to spend money in ports to upgrade parts of the ship. 
•	Combat in Tides of War is performed in real-time against other ships, with a top-down view of the world. The perspective is at a 65 degree angle in true 3D. 
•	Cross paths with Egyptian barges, Chinese junk, pirates, New World merchant ships, native canoes, and so forth. 
•	Mission types include combat, pursuit, escort, delivery, search and destroy, and exploration. For example, depending which side you choose (English, Spanish or Pirates), you may be asked to cross the ocean to find new land, deliver an important politician, locate someone in a port, or simply go to war. 
•	75 missions in total, with total freedom to explore and discover the world in all missions. That is, you can sail anywhere at any time and are not restricted by map edges. In fact, to give an idea how large this world is, take one square the size of a high-res screen on your monitor and multiply it by 30,000. It also takes approximately two hours to sail from north to south. 
•	Open-ended, non-linear gameplay: 
"Especially in combat, the player has a number of options to exercise depending on what they're after -- you can use big canon balls to sink a ship, use a chain-shot to tear down an opponent's sail, or use shrapnel to take out the crew so you can board the ship and rob it," Brian Ulrich  (Game Designer)
•	8-player TCP/IP or LAN gaming,
•	40+ computer animated cut-scenes, 
•	Multiple zoom "camera" angles

Contact Matt Broughton, Lee Kirton or Paul Fox at GT Interactive for further information.