BRINEWAKE

THE TIDE DECIDES.

A real-time strategy game on the floor of a vanished sea. Take the sluice that moves the tide, dry a crossing for your own army or drown the one the enemy needs, and turn it into a raid, a timing or the fight that ends the match.

macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon · Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Free and open source. Updates itself.

HOW IT PLAYS

The sluice house between the two crossings, with a ferry beached on the bank.

MOVE THE TIDE

Two crossings cut the basin. Whoever holds the sluice dries one and drowns the other, or floods both. Dry the north for your armored push, or flood everything and land a barge behind the enemy line.

Machines crossing a dry causeway past reed beds and a works.

BUILD A FLEET

Salvage wrecks, keep pressure up, raise works and train machines. Control groups, a command card and tooltips that explain every machine will be familiar to any RTS player.

Machines wading through a flooded lane beside a moored ferry.

WADE, FLOOD, HOLD

Shallow water slows machines and hurts them more; deep water stops ground machines entirely. Break the enemy's headquarters, or hold both crossings for ninety seconds, and the match is yours.

THREE SIDES

BREAKWATER UNIONThe heavy side on dry ground. Its Caisson plugs a crossing.
SILT ASSEMBLYWorks with the water. The Loom reaches; the Barge crosses.
SALTGLASS COMPACTFast and fragile: mirrors, brine and causeways laid over the tide.

PLAY TOGETHER

Host a match and send your friends the join code. No account and no server: the games connect to each other. Two seats on the Split Basin, three on the Confluence, or play against the computer, and learn in a short guided match first.

The music and every sound are synthesized by the game, chiptune style, and follow the match from calm to battle.

A base on the salt flat beside the water, with a squad of machines.

INSTALL

MACOS

Download and open the disk image.
Drag BRINEWAKE onto the Applications folder beside it.
Open it. The launcher checks for a new version, then starts the game.

Apple Silicon (M1 or later), macOS 12 or later. Signed and notarized by Apple.

To uninstall, delete BRINEWAKE from Applications and the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Brinewake, which holds the installed game, your settings and saves.

WINDOWS

Download and unzip the folder anywhere.
Run BRINEWAKE.exe. Keep the game folder next to it.
If Windows says it protected your PC, choose More info, then Run anyway. The game is not signed by a Windows publisher yet.

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, with a DirectX 12 or Vulkan graphics card. Allow network access when you first host.

To uninstall, delete the folder you unzipped and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Brinewake, where the game is installed. Your settings and saves are in %APPDATA%\Brinewake.

UPDATES Every time you start BRINEWAKE, the launcher asks this page for the newest version. If there is one, it downloads it, checks its signature and installs it before the game opens. Without a connection it starts the version you have. Your settings and saves carry over.

CODE SIGNING The Mac app is signed by its developer and notarized by Apple. The Windows build is not code-signed yet, so Windows asks before its first run. Code signing policy.

WHAT'S NEW

Version 0.2.0 · 2026-09-27

First public release. BRINEWAKE is now open source under the MIT license.
The launcher keeps the game up to date: at each start it installs a newer version, if there is one, before the game opens.
Music and sound volumes go from 1 to 100; music starts at 60.
The Mac app is signed and notarized. The Windows build is not code-signed yet, so Windows may ask before running it.

Other downloads: macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows (64-bit)