Perfect Tides: Station To Station struck a deep chord with me. See, the game revolves around a protagonist going off to do a Creative Writing degree. The exact degree that I have. In 2011, when I was just eighteen, I went to a university in a completely different county. I knew no one that was going, and I was suffering badly with anxiety at the time. It remains one of the strangest, most chaotic experiences in my life. Suddenly, everything was uprooted and I was left to make sense of what it had become.
In the end, it was quite a positive experience. There were quite a few mistakes, a lot of hangovers and a massive helping of anxiety. But I met a lot of good people, wrote a ton of stuff (of varying quality) and felt, for the first time, that maybe I wasn’t such a waste of space. Those were the feelings that bubbled to the surface when I was playing Perfect Tides: Station To Station. It’s a wonderfully written story about crashing into adulthood, and trying to figure out meaning in things that ultimately feel meaningless.
Writer, Write Thyself
Let me take a step back before going all ‘English Degree’ on you. Perfect Tides: Station To Station is the follow up to Perfect Tides, which I’ve not played, but it followed the turbulent teenage years of islander Mara Whitefish. In Station To Station, she’s off the island and in to university, where she’s studying writing. The story goes to great length to show all the ups and downs of university life, and what it does to a young mind. It’s a game that lives and dies on its writing, being essentially a hyper-evolved visual novel. Fortunately, the writing is excellent.
Now to dredge up the bit of my degree that I sucked at: literary analysis. To my mind, Perfect Tides: Station To Station is neatly split between Mara’s desire to find herself and to find others. In the ‘herself’ category is her writing. Like all good writers, she’s crippled by imposter syndrome. Part of the gameplay involves rewriting her magnum opus short story, and you pick and choose which books to read and which real-world experiences influence it. As Mara gets buffeted by life, the story ebbs and flows, and the whole time she’s left wondering whether it’s all worth it. It’s great stuff, that totally didn’t hit uncomfortably home.
Writing forms a core component of her life, both as an outlet for negativity and the grounds for positivity, which could be kicked out from underneath her at any time. But the other half is the search for others. Mara, in my run at least, grappled with the concept of love. She drifted in and out relationships, wounding and be wounded in turn. This, more than anything, hammered home the concept of moving into adulthood to me. Emotions, desires and sexual frustration all fighting against each other, and never having the words to describe any of it. Which can be a touch frustrating, if you happen to be a writer.
(Lack Of) Sex In The City
Alright, I think we’ve established that I like the writing. Time to talk about Perfect Tides: Station To Station‘s gameplay. It’s a light-touch point’n’click, mainly involving chatting to people, making choices and occasional inventory puzzles. What elevates it is the ‘Topics’ mechanic, where Mara gets more confident about various topics, like music or anarchism, by exploring the city. This then feeds into her writing projects. Knowledge can increase by reading books or talking to people, encouraging you to explore. It’s a nice mechanic, especially as time is limited. Writing papers might take up half a day, so you’ve got to pick between your work life and your social life. Imagine that.
I will say that Station To Station feels like it’s missing something of a through line. We stumble, deliberately, from set piece to set piece but at times there’s little in the way of player direction, and it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. I feel like the university course aspect could’ve helped cement things. Still, this is a game of choices and there’s a metric ton of them. A stressful (in a good way) amount. Your run might well be vastly different from mine. Station To Station even spices the gameplay up with minigames, like emulating old-school dress-up games to get yourself ready. Or, in the best case, orchestrating a singalong to Bohemian Rhapsody.
The gameplay serves the writing well. No matter what choices you make, Mara feels like Mara. Just putting up and breaking down different walls. The art helps as well. There’s a lovely old-school adventure game look to it. Far away shots get broken down into crunchy pixel art, while up close shots are beautifully animated. Mara is incredibly expressive, which highlights her goofy personality well, while also knowing how to keep things serious. My only complaint is that when we’re exploring the city, the whole animation felt rather choppy to the point it felt close to bringing on my motion sickness.
Perfect Tides: Station To Station – A Dissection Of Young Adulthood
There is one thing I should say about Perfect Tides: Station To Station: you need patience to play it. You’re peering inside someone’s head, to the point that you have a direct line to their inner voice. As such, if you don’t like that person, you might bounce of it. Mara is hard to like at times, especially as you watch her stumble into yet another terrible choice. It’s also quite a pretentious game at times. Forgivably so, for the most part. Nothing is more pretentious than a young adult discovering classic literature. But it also delivers dry lectures on the books you read, which can get a bit grating at times.
Still though, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that this is exactly the point. The writing is pretentious because Mara is pretentious. But if you can stop your lip curling, you’ll find that there’s a heartfelt undercurrent. Mara’s story isn’t going to set the world on fire, but it’s a great representation of what it’s like to try and find your place in the world. Anxiety and doubt sharing a room with hope and wonder. Trying to better yourself, but not knowing how. It’s a story about someone fixating on the question of why the curtains are blue, because they don’t want to acknowledge that the rest of the room is on fire.
