Perfect Tides: Station to Station Review: An interactive coming-of-age story

There’s a lot going around Ideal Tides: Station to StationMara which I find relevant. Like me, she recently moved to a place simply called “The City” from nowhere, and like me, she is an avid writer. But these biographical details are not the important thing; It’s the way the game’s incredibly sharp writing is drawn that I’m starting to feel uncomfortable seeing. There are plenty of characters in media who seem awkward or socially anxious, but few are drawn with such insightful specificity.

The point-and-click game is simple in its mechanics. The game consists mostly of conversations, which is broken up into a few puzzles, object interactions, and minigames. This isn’t a complaint: the game shines at talking to people, because that’s how we see most of Mara. It is a validating and resonant portrait of someone who I found myself internalizing What We Were Different as a coping mechanism against spending money all Introspection of time. I’m proud of myself, for example, because I’ve never had a bad boyfriend. In this, certainly, I can find some self-soothing superiority over this badass video game character.

The dynamics of Mara’s relationship with her controlling, older, long-distance partner are drawn with narrative thought and mechanics. In one conversation, a health bar suddenly appears, and you must navigate a particularly difficult conversation without losing all of your hearts, some of which you only gain if you spend time nurturing other connections. It’s one of many great metaphors, and combined with clever moment-by-moment writing, it leads to a particularly notable moment, which yanked “Oh, hell” from my mouth in real life.

By then I would have bought it outright Station to station . I thought I had a form of it. Dear Mara and her messy relationships I can keep as a simplifying barrier between us. But the game won’t settle for simplicity.

Apart from conversation, the other important mechanism is Mara’s writings. This manifests itself in school assignments, guest blog posts, and in one particularly unfortunate moment for Mara, an overly involved forum post, and she will need to stitch together threads to complete the piece in question. These topics include the city, music, and sex, and they level up as you talk to people and experience the world. It’s a very simple but effective representation of how writing works: you learn things through life and then combine the ideas, hopefully, into something new and expressive.

There is one piece that works differently. Mara writes a story that is clearly a thinly veiled allegory for her own life, and the teacher gives her some relatively harsh comments. For the rest of the game, the story looms in the back of her mind. You can’t fix this by simply combining an idea your friend had about movies with your own reflections on the death caused by your sick grandmother. But each one of these might help a little bit as you get rid of them little by little. Suffice it to say without delving into my recent writing experiences Station to station He offended me again. I had Mara work on it whenever I could, reminding her each time of my deteriorating project and the confidence needed to wait and take it slowly.

At this point in the game, it’s clear that said partner isn’t Mara’s only problem. In fact, most of her interactions with other characters are distorted in one way or another. Personally, I will not get involved with these people! But again, the game resists simplicity. Although he always presents harmful interpersonal dynamics honestly and without excusing bad behavior, he completely rejects the idea of ​​closing yourself off to avoid them. Because you will miss a lot. So much joy, so much connection, so much potential.

In one of the only conversations in the game that feels completely uncomplicated and productive, a character tells Mara “You’ll just have to risk it with someone and see.” Station to station He argues, again and again, that opening up to others, despite the risk of embarrassment and not being treated well, is worth it. Mara is naive, and not very good at knowing what she wants, let alone asking for it. And she’s hurt. But she also lives a much better life when she’s not closed off to experiences and people. She deals with the consequences, and through this she learns, grows, and thrives. My perceived superiority at being avoidant is suddenly the rift through which Station to station She sank her claws into me. I will think about it for a very long time.

There’s a lot I could talk about, like the multiple excellent musical interludes, or the wildly exaggerated animation that feels genuinely expressive while also being consistently comedic. I could even complain bitterly about some of the occasional environmental puzzles and the way they brought the story to a screeching halt if you missed even one small point of interaction. But what kept me thinking about the game long after the credits rolled was the emotional honesty and sincerity it demanded of me while playing it.

After I played the game, I kept cooking for a few days, thinking about Mara, myself, and an unforgettable bit of karaoke. Then it hit me: I never finished rewriting Mara. No matter how important it was in that moment, it turned out to be far less important than Mara and I opening ourselves up and accepting the consequences, both good and bad.

_{Ideal Tides: Station to Station Now available on PC.}