Perfect Tides

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 s…

I very much enjoyed this game and I'm looking forward to playing the sequel!

beautiful and funny, 10/10

I grew really attached to this world seen through Maras' eyes almost immediately. The characters are all very well written, like them or not. The world itself has a good amount of interactivity, some of which changes with the seasons. The story may seem like "low-stakes", but from the perspective of our MC it means so, so much. Empathize and lose yourself in it. Highly recommend to anyone who grew up in the 90s/early 00's, or to those who have felt alienated IRL and found their "people" in online communities.

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 am…

Absolutely incredible - remarkable story, delightful atmosphere, and unforgettable characters. I can't wait to play the sequel.