Let's save the environment!
Rising Tides is one of the many stories from Pixelberry's Choices: Stories You Play collection.When you and your activist-minded sister try to raise awareness about climate change and end up going toe to toe with a large corporation whose practices are damaging the environment, you find yourself unintentionally cast as the face of an eco-activist movement.
Rising Tides includes examples of:
- The Alleged Car: Mel only buys that Robin isn't a tabloid reporter once she realizes their car is a clunker and they defend it by saying it's "vintage."
- Alliterative Name: Cassidy Carhart.
- Big Bad: Warner, CEO of Monteverde and the mastermind of the die off.
- Cerebus Syndrome: This happens in Chapter 7. For the first six chapters, the story is relatively light-hearted, focusing on Harriet helping Charlie raise awareness for climate change. While there are a couple of serious moments (such as Harriet's family having to contend with their business possibly failing due to the fish dying off and Principal Strickler's antagonistic ways), it's nothing too threatening. But in Chapter 7, Charlie is slandered due to her activist behaviour (and has to deal with people posting horrible comments about her, with one even including a Suicide Dare), Harriet and her long-time best friend Eddie have a falling out, the citizens of Cedarport will no longer listen to Harriet, and the end of the chapter features a gruesome image of a Dead Animal Warning, directed against Harriet. This is also the first chapter with a Content Warning, and for good reason.
- Character Alignment: In-Universe. Harriet's choices in dialogue with Charlie can determine if she's an Optimist, a Firebrand, or Diplomat, and the player is prompted of this before a selection is made.
- Character Customization: Both Robin Tora and Cassidy Carhart can be male or female. Moreover, Robin can be either East Asian or Ambiguously Brown while Cassidy can be either white or black.
- Closet Shuffle: A premium scene with Robin can have Harriet ask them what the wildest story they covered was. They interviewed a zookeeper about an escaped octopus, but it was hiding in a storage closet.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Mel. In Chapter 2, she assumes all reporters are working for a secret government agency that are tasked with "intelligence gathering" and that "WTF"note is an intelligence agency (because she hears it mentioned online all the time). She thinks Robin's after the secret of her prize zucchinis when they introduce themselves.
- Dead Animal Warning: At the end of Chapter 7, Harriet finds that somebody broke into her car and left behind a dead fish stabbed with a knife.
- Dean Bitterman: Principal Strickler is this to the students of Cedarport High School as Harriet can attest to, and with Charlie having to now feel the brunt of his wrath. Harriet felt his dress code enforcement was super sexist. Chapter 3 has him lock up Charlie and several other students against their will in the school and taking their phones for protesting for the environment, and he's planning on taking it out on her for "disrupting the class."
- Fun-Hating Confiscating Adult: Principal Strickler is this to the point where he confiscated a student named Neena's ukelele for her talent show audition. He took it because it was "disruptive".
- Heel–Face Turn: Principal Strickler does this in Chapter 10 and rallies the town into rebuilding the Thompson's home, since nobody deserves what the family has gone through.
- Hello, Attorney!: Cassidy Carhart.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: As with all Choices characters, you can name certain characters. The main character's name is Harriet Thompson.
- Heroic BSoD: Harriet suffers one in Chapter 10 after Monteverde sends thugs to destroy the Thompson's home and business, which prompts the rest of the family to stop fighting for Cedarport considering the damage.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter title is themed after water, similar to It Lives Beneath.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Robin just happens to have a pair of lockpicks with them when they help Harriet go to break Charlie out of school in Chapter 3. When Harriet asks if it's illegal, considering Principal Strickler is keeping kids in school and taking their phones, they consider it this trope.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Just within Chapter 1, Harriet is introduced to Cedarport's waters being swamped with dead fish.
- Port Town: Cedarport is this, which gets hit with a fish die-off. Later chapters reveal the cause was dumping a fertilizer into the ocean.
- Sticky Situation: A premium scene in Chapter 3 has Harriet and Charlie trying to put some confiscated glue back in Strickler's desk, only for it to end up in his chair. When he tries to get up from his chair, he ends up ripping a hole in his pants.
- Suicide Dare: One of the comments that Charlie receives in Chapter 7 goes like this:"Shut up, SJW. Nobody cares about your ideas. If you love fish so much, why don't you go jump in the ocean, you stupid bitch!"note
- Tomboyish Name: Charlotte "Charlie" Morgan.
- We Need a Distraction: In Chapter 3, a premium scene allows Harriet, Charlie and Robin to make a distraction to keep Principal Strickler from noticing they broke the kids out, and also for Harriet to get some revenge on her old principal.
