Wasn't expecting "Perfect Tides: Station to Station" to have a "death" scene...

What a lively place!

After three and a half hours of playing Perfect Tides: Station to Station I had to take a break. A lot happened since my first steps as Mara into The City. Things started off going quite well, but Mara's boyfriend problems were a recurring issue I knew I had to deal with quickly.

Ah, alone in a movie theater... 

After succesfully writing two papers, reading some books and going to see a movie by my lonesome, I met a famous writer/blogger who invited me to a reading, followed by some drinks. Those drinks didn't sit well with Mara, though, as her mother witnessed when she went to pick her up from the station.

The Mainland looks like a (White)fish...

The game overwhelms me a bit with its possibilities. There's much to see in any particular location. There are hotspots which turn the cursor red, but you can also right-click on random background elements and get a description as well. There's a lot of detail put into this game, both in world building as well as character building. This game is like a novel, there's so much information to be found. No wonder it won the Excellence In Narrative IGF Award!

What shall we do today?

But Mara's computer has a lot to offer too. On the first day I was allowed to surf a bit before writing my paper, so the next time I sat down to work naturally I decided to check online first again. You never know if you could find something that might raise your knowledge of certain topics. However, time ran out before I could start on my next paper because I had to go to a party with my friend Lily. Who also had a book to trade, but I hadn't had time to read the ones I had yet that day, and it was too crowded and noisy at the party to read one there and then. So it kinda felt like a wasted day, academically speaking of course.

Looks like a relaxing evening, right? RIGHT?

To make matters worse, Mara's boyfriend kept checking up on her everywhere she went, so finally "the call" came in which Mara decided to break up with him. Suddenly I had a kind of mental health bar, you could say, and when it ran out, I got something like a Sierra random death message. I had to go through the conversation five or six times before I succeeded in giving the appropriate replies. He just wouldn't take no for an answer... I wasn't too fond of this sequence... But hey, I'm just the player, imagine actually being Mara in that situation...

And indeed we were...

But finally I succeeded, and suddenly the school year is over, it's summer and Mara is working at the library, enjoying a well-deserved break from, well, pretty much everything, I guess. I'm a bit confused though, because I thought I still had some writing assignments due, and one of the books I had just vanished from my inventory... Now I need to write a piece for another reading with that writer/blogger, and Mara also has a story she wants to rewrite. I tried to write the first piece, since that reading is that same night already, but it sounds like the quality of whatever I write is rather meh... So I don't have high hopes for this event...


You can find Perfect Tides: Station to Station on Steam and on itch.