Perfect Tides

I bought Perfect Tides and Station to Station at the same time with the idea that I'd play them one after the other, but man, it's been a few months and I'm still recovering from the first game. It's such a dense thing, saying so much so succinctly, and the writing is some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. The way the characters talk past each other and discuss everything except for the things they want or need to talk about and the hyper-accurate teenage cringe that the writing embraces even as it flinches away from it... It's great. The island the game is set in is also a character of its own. This is a game where you can easily miss some side and even some important interactions if you aren't thorough, but I found myself [I]wanting[/I] to explore the map, which has wildly different vibes during day and night and throughout the seasons the game takes place in. Every screen is oozing with mood, it felt like I was transported into the space. More than anything, though, the game understands the medium. While the characters in the game might want to do anything but confront their own feelings, their surroundings betray everything about them and clicking around and reading the narrator's thoughts is a huge delight, revealing so much about the protagonist's internal thoughts and their perception of the people around them. There are a few things you can do that the game only hints at and aren't required to proceed, but doing them doesn't feel like completing a quest - they're natural extensions of the plot. While I can imagine Perfect Tides as a novel or a comic book, I think it would lose a lot of the charm that an adventure game gives it. All in all, masterful work and once I'm done wincing I'll be jumping right into Perfect Tides.

Thank you for making this. I cried through the entire ending (and then some) with this overwhelming sense of melancholic joy that I get to share in a world full of people making such wonderful art and sharing it with that very same world. There is a human soul in every corner of this game, and I cannot thank you enough for sharing it.

Game got to me in a ways i didn't expect, all to reletable for me. If you want play a story that touches you in a heart string i would recommend this one. You can follow this game without a guide, it doesn't realy on moon logic. Really good time

Perfect Tides is a pretty charming little game. The art style is cute, the writing is engaging, and the story kept me interested from beginning to end. My biggest complaint is the gameplay. Sometimes I had to click on objects multiple times before the character would interact with them correctly, which got frustrating. Some of the puzzles were also a bit obscure. For example, I had no idea you were supposed to oven the peas to get the seeds out. That one had me completely stumped. The story was probably the strongest part of the game. As a guy, I can't fully relate to Mara's coming-of-age experience, but I still found it interesting to see things from a teenage girl's perspective. It made me wonder how closely it reflects real experiences for girls growing up during that time. The characters felt believable because they're all flawed. Mara is shy, quirky, and naive, but she can also be selfish when she's overwhelmed. One example is when Lily tells her she might be moving away and Mara lashes out instead of considering how difficult the situation might be for Lily. At the same time, Lily isn't perfect either, often seeming to distance herself from Mara at school to protect her own social standing. Looking back, a lot of the characters make selfish decisions in different ways, which makes them feel human. Some characters were more likable than others. Timothy comes across as lazy, Jason is a womanizer, and Amanda can be frustratingly flaky. One thing that annoyed me was that the game doesn't really let you outright reject Jason after catching him messing around with another girl. My favorite part of the game was reconciling with Lily and the dance montage. Watching Mara struggle, keep trying, and gradually improve was genuinely sweet and ended up being one of the most memorable scenes in the game. I wasn't a fan of the drug use throughout the story. It felt unnecessary to me, and at times came across as if it was normalizing or encouraging it. Maybe that's just my personal perspective, but I never had experiences like that growing up. Overall, Perfect Tides tells a surprisingly complex and thoughtful slice-of-life story. It won't be for everyone, especially if you're looking for action or fast-paced gameplay, but I'd definitely recommend it to people who enjoy character-driven stories and coming-of-age narratives, atleast once.

Good :)

Perfect Tides is a charming and nostalgic point and click experience as it follows the female lead, Mara Whitefish, live through a year of her life in the early 2000's era of the world where internet culture started to develop with the teenagers of the time. The story was written gracefully, with moments that made me laugh, cringe, and contemplate/reflect my own childhood growing up and my reactions to certain events that happened in my life. The setting was also a big highlight, as Mara's descriptions gave the island of Perfect Tides a deep history that transformed this fictional town into something real and lived in, with her experiences with her family and school life being some of the most relatable stuff that I have read in a while. The gameplay is your standard old-school point and click, collecting items, exploring, talking, and completing little puzzles to advance the story. My only complaint that I have about the title is the fact that it can feel a little aimless in what exactly you need to do next in certain parts of the game, as well as how accurate with the cursor you must be to click on items. I can understand that the inspiration for this choice of gameplay comes from the old LucasArts titles of the time, but I think a small hint/reminder system for the more obtuse actions would have helped make the experience more smooth. (Also a tip for those still playing through the game or have yet to start, increase the speed setting in the menu to walk significantly faster throughout the game!) In all, I enjoyed my time with Perfect Tides and I would definitely recommend to those who enjoy stories about the complicated nature of life and growing up, as well as those who are fans of the point and click genre. I'm off to play the sequel Station to Station, which I hope to be another great title from the dev's!

It's rare that the theme of adolescence is shown through a mature lense without falling into some kind of irreverence or flippancy. Perfect Tides manages to achieve that. The game's story and characters come across as deeply genuine and complex without compromising on humour and levity. It is a coming-of-age story which treats the perspective of the main character with an almost unprescedented amount of respect, all throughout remaining very careful not to anchor itself in hindsight and condescension. The writing is so beautifully direct in its emotion and in how it conveys the internality of the main character that it is impossible not to fully immerse yourself in and empathise with her. Every concern that may feel benign to an adult is here treated with the insurmountable scale of a 16-year-old's life in mind, and you can feel every overwhelming detail of it. Every hope and fear, every blush, every ill-fated belief, every smile and tremor manage to seem grand and important when it would have been so easy to belittle that emotional reality, even unconsciously. This story, as all good ones, makes familiar things become alien again, small things become huge, and huge things become sublime. Perfect Tides is a game written with an incredible level of care and sensitivity. I could recommend it to almost anyone. I am a bit frustrated by the fact that it's so easy to accidentally skip dialogue, and no way to go back to it without reloading a save. :/