Reflection has become a prominent theme in narrative games over the past few years, especially with recent games such as Mixtape and Wax Heads, which explore fairly universal experiences of youth; skateboards, CDs and record stores aren’t exactly a niche topic, particularly for those growing up in the nineties and noughties.
Unlike these games, Perfect Tides: Station to Station doesn’t portray a universal experience in the conventional sense but instead explores a single perspective through the eyes of Mara Whitefish – a writer and college student battling with her own sense of self through a snapshot of a year in her life; this isn’t a game about choosing the right options; it’s about experiencing the wrong ones.
Before I begin, I should preface this by saying that the game is a sequel – the original Perfect Tides very much sets the tone and the story for Station to Station, but the two can definitely be played as separate entities. If you can’t wait that long, however, rest assured that creator Meredith Gran has already confirmed a console release for the first game after a few tweaks. Anyway, back to the main event.
Much like its predecessor, the game is a point-and-click adventure akin to Sierra On-Line classics such as the glorious Space Quest and the regrettable Leisure Suit Larry: you point your cursor, you click on stuff, and you use items – easy peasy! Where it deviates from these grand adventures is in the scope of its content; puzzles are fairly light, environments aren’t crammed with much unnecessary detail, and the story plays a much more central role.
I could spend hours comparing the game to The Secret of Monkey Island, but the gameplay is secondary to the narrative, feeling more like a visual novel with extra steps – but don’t mistake that for a criticism. Station to Station follows an 18-year-old Mara Whitefish as she attends college in the city, an enormous paradigm shift from her youth on the island of Perfect Tides, where the original game sought to explore Mara’s sense of self through the lens of religion and lifestyle; the sequel instead lets Mara become the very person she hopes to be through experience.
You’ll notice I don’t say ‘the player’ much, as there are actually very few choices that you can make to affect Mara’s actions – you can decide when and what to write or do during your downtime, read a selection of books based on real-life works and even choose additional talking points with certain characters, but when it matters, your hands will be firmly off the steering wheel. Mara will make mistakes, choose her lifestyle and map her own thoughts and feelings onto every situation, a refreshing change of pace from the blank-slate protagonist we tend to see – you may not agree with Mara at times, but this isn’t your story.
This degree of hands-off decision-making can be off-putting for some, but it’s important to remember that characters, both in fiction and in media, are not meant to be flawless reflections of the one witnessing it all – you know that Doctor Frankenstein will make another monster, but you are powerless to stop him, just as you know Mara will smoke a joint on an empty stomach and make herself tremendously ill. It’s these mistakes, choices and experiences that shape how Perfect Tides: Station to Station progresses, leading you to empathise with Mara at both her highest and lowest points – rest assured I won’t be spoiling any plot points: those are your experiences to be had.
One part of the game that does warrant mentioning, however, involves the hit Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody and a clever bit of licence avoidance; rest assured I won’t be spoiling the surprise, but there’s a degree of fourth-wall-breaking humour in how it’s approached – the scene is also special not just for its tactful skirting of music regulations but also because of how it brings the characters to life. Without text boxes to tell you what to think, you are given a full range of emotions through tactful characterisation, all packaged up neatly in the pixel art stylings of the game – fellow writer Erik Lunde put it best in the So Many Games Discord: “You didn’t just read about the character’s personality; you felt it.”
Creator Meredith Gran has been open about her own life influencing these stories in the past – the first Perfect Tides was a semi-biographical parallel to her own experiences growing up on Long Island. There is a focus on what it means to be Jewish and the responsibilities that brings, which has been explored at length in a video by Jacob Geller (who is vastly more qualified to do so than I), but this brings me back to what makes the game stand out – Mara’s story isn’t your story; her lived experience isn’t yours, but the lesson at the centre of it all stands true: go out and make your own mistakes.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station is just as much about life as it is about uncomfortable conversations; sex, drugs and death will be common topics among the people you speak to, and you’ll often walk away feeling uneasy. That being said, it’s this discomfort that makes the game worth playing – every anxious leap into the unknown is a question answered, for better or for worse.
