I don’t see anything in the OP about making it work just like real life. The mechanics you’re describing aren’t even known to most regular folks anyway, I suspect the average understanding of the tide ends at “water goes up or down at some interval” and that’s totally doable in a game.
Viewing post in Tide Systems In Games?
I have not seen it and wondered why. And then found a very plausible reason. You supplied another one. Most people do not even know how tides work. (Including game devs ;-)
And another one would be, either you have to make additional static images or you have to allow your engine for different water levels. You do not do that kind of thing for some secret.
But I think I remembe two instances with rising and falling water level. Less tide but sea water making the beach dissappear happens in some Mario Kart levels. And in an old Tomb Raider that had a level in Venice. But I think that was some other mechanism, like flood gates and not the tide.