Perfect Tides

I've long-stopped bothering with stories about teenagers, coming-of-age stories, or clunky, old school adventure-style UIs. PERFECT TIDES is focused on a teenager, is a (kind of) coming of age story, and has a clunky, old school UI; it speaks volumes to the quality of its writing and animation that I found it captivating and moving. It's a point'n'click adventure game about a self-conscious, extremely self-critical teenager named Mara Whitefish, a slice-of-life, bittersweet story best described as "wonderful". It's plainly, partly based on the creator's own adolescence. PERFECT TIDES has a graphic novelist's instinct for storytelling; I wasn't surprised to learn the creator's produced an acclaimed series, OCTOPUS PIE. What I mean is that it outward-but-inward-looking interest in other people and one's own emotional turns; it's also comfortable knowing when text or visuals should be telling the story. The closest pop cultural thing is BOJACK HORSEMAN or the TV series LONG STORY SHORT, but Winston Rowntree's work shares similar sensibilities. Its biggest issues are actually as a game. Firstly, the puzzle design can feel directionless, especially in act one; I spent a surprising amount of time unable to puzzle out what I was supposed to be doing, much less how to do it. This is especially rough coming off a masterclass in this like THE DRIFTER. Secondly, it's the UI I mentioned above; it's done in an old-school Sierra style, with default text boxes and responses to things, which makes it hard to recommend. One example is that right click both skips cutscenes and cycles through your verb icons, so I'd sometimes enter a room, only for a cutscene to trigger without me noticing, and I find myself having skipped the whole thing wanting to cycle through verb icons. It's also sometimes just hard to get a read on things. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that using the hand icon on the door wasn't working because I was clicking on Mara instead. (Line: "Maybe later." I didn't realise until later that it was a joke—how do I slip past Steam's censorship here?—about onanism.) Nonetheless, I can HIGHLY recommend PERFECT TIDES. It's a game that demands to be played at least twice, since it offers multiple experiences, leading to different endings. I (as always) went in blind; the ending I got, poignant though it may have been, introduced an element I couldn't understand. I began suspecting I was missing something when I realised I was getting achievements in the ~3%-5% range, and a quick look up later let me know that yes, actually, I was right. I wish the dev would patch it with an updated UI and some tweaks here and there to strengthen its messaging, but here's another argument for why these smaller games should be so cherished. I'm very fortunate to have played PERFECT TIDES and look forward to both replaying it and its sequel. Maybe I'll read OCTOPUS PIE after. TL;DR: Please play it. It's flipping great.

lovely game, wonderful use of the point and click genre.

[h1]Rough point & click game, but a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good story.[/h1] [h1]8/10[/h1] [b]This is a grounded yet funny coming-of-age story[/b], where both the narrative and its protagonist develop in some pretty unexpected and emotional ways throughout the four seasons the game spans. The main character may be a little unlikeable and bratty at times, but in a very understandable way, and the rest of the cast of characters is equally memorable and flawed. The setting is pretty interesting and unique too, despite looking kinda mundane at first glance, and the charming art style does a great job fleshing out both the characters and the world. [b]As for the gameplay... it feels like it´s old school for the sake of being old school. [/b] It uses a retro interface, but the game doesn’t really do anything with it, and it just ends up making the experience clunkier. I don’t think the puzzles were particularly memorable (and the game doesn’t really have many), and there’s a lot of annoying missable content that makes the story better. I also ran into a few somewhat frustrating cases of pixel-hunting. This is one of the rare cases that made me wish this was an “interactive movie” instead - [b].but nevertheless, I 100% think this game is worth playing for the story.[/b]

The writing's really good! Play it with a guide though.

This is a very very very good game!

good game is good

I really like this game. The only thing that I have a trouble with was either understanding grammar of 2D adventure games, or the controls are finicky and buggy, I went to guides to help me the confusing parts or parts I had trouble understanding. I watched the ending for the 100% ending. Overall, it is a nice slice of early 2000's life.