Black Tides: Draga’s Wake Stands Out With its Former Rockstar Developer and Body Horror

It is always interesting to see developers who spend years working on some of the biggest games in the industry eventually leave AAA studios to build the game they have always wanted to make. It also gives them a chance to explore creative ideas that might not fit within the direction of a major publisher.

Working at a major studio doesn't automatically guarantee a developer's next project will succeed, but the experience can give them a unique perspective on how large-scale games are made. That is especially compelling with Black Tides: Draga's Wake, an upcoming independent single-player action horror game led by former Rockstar developer Greg J. Strange.

Greg spent 16 years working professionally as a character and creature artist across major studios, including Rockstar Games, Naughty Dog, and Turtle Rock. 

His time at Rockstar is particularly relevant because he contributed to the kind of enormous productions where characters, creatures, animation, and small visual details receive incredible attention. He wasn't solely responsible for the success of games like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption 2, since those projects were built by large teams, but he was one of many developers contributing his experience and specialty.

After years of working on other people's visions, Greg eventually reached the point where he wanted to take everything he had learned and use it to create something of his own. That project is Black Tides: Draga's Wake, and it immediately stands apart from the games you would normally associate with his previous employers.

Greg has described Black Tides as essentially the kind of game he kept waiting for somebody else to make. The goal is to create a horror experience where character and creature designs are not simply there to give you something disgusting to fight. Instead, those designs should play an important role in the storytelling and the world itself.

The project draws inspiration from Guillermo del Toro's combination of beauty, mythology, and horrifying imagery, while also taking influence from the transformational body horror seen in films like The Thing and Leviathan. That mix provides the game a distinct visual direction where beauty and horror can exist side by side.

That approach makes sense considering Greg's background as a character and creature artist. Black Tides takes place around the Ormora, an old whaling steamship that becomes trapped in the ice after what was supposed to be one final heist goes badly wrong. You play as Drago Bolivar, a hardened smuggler and pirate first mate whose crew has disappeared throughout the enormous ship while a doomsday cult and increasingly disturbing cosmic horrors take control of the vessel.

The Ormora itself is intended to be more than a collection of hallways connecting one combat encounter to another.

The ship includes flooded lower decks, old machinery, steel corridors, steam pipes, and larger multi-level areas that create a connected environment to explore. The developers have also said the ship gradually comes alive and keeps changing as you progress, so your understanding of the environment is meant to evolve alongside the story.

That concentrated setting could also help Black Tides create a more detailed horror experience without requiring the enormous scale of an open-world game. Instead of spreading the team's resources across a massive map, the developers can focus on making one location extremely detailed and gradually changing it as you learn more about what happened there. 

The gameplay is also more action-heavy than you might initially expect from a game built around cosmic horror. Black Tides is not purely about hiding from monsters or waiting for them to disappear. Drago can fight back through close-quarters melee combat built around dodging, heavy attacks, and brawler-style combinations, while ranged attacks can be worked into the middle of those encounters.

The developers are placing a lot of emphasis on making physical contact feel heavy and violent. Attacks are meant to look like they actually connect with enemies rather than simply playing an animation in front of them. At the same time, ammunition, health, and power are supposed to remain limited enough that using firearms to solve every encounter isn't always an option.

That adds an important resource-management layer beneath the action.

You can fight aggressively, but you still have to consider your resource use and future needs. The combination of melee attacks, ranged weapons, limited supplies, and dodging should make combat more involved than simply unloading ammunition into every creature that appears.

The most compelling part of Black Tides, however, may be what happens to Drago himself. An ancient entity has taken root in his body, and the infection isn't just a story element you watch unfold through cutscenes. Instead, it ties directly into the game's combat and progression systems, making the character's physical transformation central to how you play.

Drago can lean further into the infection and enter what the developers call the vessel state. This physically mutates him and changes how he fights, moves, and perceives his surroundings. His progression is also connected to consumption, because as you encounter members of Drago's crew and other survivors, you can choose who to absorb.

Those decisions affect Drago's skill tree, physical mutations, and what ultimately happens to the people he encounters.

Becoming more powerful therefore comes with a visible transformation, as the ancient entity inside him gradually changes what he is. The progression system ties directly to the game's central themes instead of offering a standard list of upgrades that could belong to any action game.

The same philosophy appears to extend to the creatures aboard the Ormora. Their designs connect to the characters and story rather than being created as a collection of monsters to provide enemy variety. This approach helps make the creatures feel like a natural part of the world instead of simply obstacles placed in your path.

If Strange Creature Factory can successfully connect the creatures, character progression, mutations, and storytelling throughout the campaign, Black Tides could develop a much stronger identity than simply being another independent horror game inspired by Resident Evil.

That is also why Greg's previous career is worth discussing beyond simply mentioning Rockstar in connection with the project. Strange Creature Factory doesn't suddenly have Rockstar's budget because Greg formerly worked there, and Greg has been open that Black Tides is being developed by a small studio without the resources of a major publisher. 

A small team of specialists and generalists is creating the project, trying to apply that professional experience to a more focused independent production. That creates an interesting situation because the team does not have the enormous resources of the AAA studios where Greg previously worked. 

Many talented developers in massive studios spend years contributing to games that sell millions of copies, yet most players will never know their names because hundreds or thousands of people may work on those projects. It also means that these developers often go unnoticed, even though their individual contributions play an important role in bringing those games to life.

Black Tides is still in active development, so the team still needs to bring plenty together before anyone can judge the full experience.

The scope is ambitious for a small independent team, particularly because it combines detailed character work, body transformations, melee combat, firearms, resource management, progression choices, and a large interconnected environment that is supposed to evolve throughout the experience.

Still, the gameplay shown so far already gives a clearer idea of what Strange Creature Factory is trying to accomplish. The project is not particularly compelling simply because Greg formerly worked at Rockstar. The combination of its setting, combat, mutations, creature design, and focus on physical storytelling gives it a specific direction that goes beyond its developer's résumé.

Perhaps most notably, Greg is not leaving Rockstar to recreate a smaller version of the games he previously helped make. Instead, he is moving in an entirely different direction and building around the areas where he spent years developing expertise: characters, creatures, physical transformations, and visual storytelling.

Greg has said he spent much of his career building other people's visions while this particular idea stayed in the back of his mind. Black Tides: Draga's Wake is essentially the result of finally having the opportunity to pursue that idea himself, and the game's development will show whether that long-held vision can successfully become a complete independent horror experience.