Perfect Tides: Station to Station
Perfect Tides: Station to Station (a sequel to the original, excellent Perfect Tides) is a very good game. Set in 2003 we've jumped ahead a few years to find protagonist Mara in the first year of college in the big city (an unnamed NYC). She's determined to be a writer but is endlessly distracted by the city itself, a string of unsuccessful romantic endeavours and family commitments tethered to a brutal commute. The richness and substance of all these elements is incredible given the small development team of writer/artist/animator Meredith Gran with background work by Soren Hughes and music by Daniel Kobylarz (plus some meaningful support from others).
Beyond the aesthetic and nostalgic delights Gran's real skill as a storyteller here is balancing competing perspectives: we are wholly in Mara's head as we play but never to the exclusion of everything else. Gentle attempts to encourage Mara to see outside of herself, hints of other characters' lives that go way beyond her comprehension, they're constantly in her orbit, glancing off but leaving little dents and impressions. Gran understands that what makes late adolescence such formative period in our lives; it's how we learn to negotiate our self-obsession with what others, the wider world, can teach us. For Mara it's a massive struggle, but a meaningful one.
I really went through it playing this game. Initially because I wondered if I'd actually grown beyond Mara's teenage preoccupations as a significantly older person, it being so vivid and recognisable even in my dotage (lol). But then I realised that I actually had progressed, just in less obvious ways. Every time I shouted at the screen, pleading for Mara to make a better choice, to say something in a kinder way, to appreciate what she had, I acknowledged my own greater impulse towards humility, curiosity, patience, kindness and how all these things have grown (and hopefully will keep growing) as I age. This was an exhilarating experience.
I finished the game accepting that dissatisfaction will probably haunt my entire life, but I will almost certainly handle it better than I did as an 18-year-old.
this is an edited version of my steam review