It's been a second and I already feel like I've forgotten how to do this; at the same time I'm also very excited. It's currently January 23rd and I've played 3ish hours of Perfect Tides: Station to Station

Preface: I love Meredith Gran's work. I came very late to Octopus Pie (her long form webcomic), so I can't claim to be a real one or have been part of the moment, but I think of both Octopus Pie and Perfect Tides as works of art that I hold very dear to me. So much so that it's kind of hard to articulate why.

Perfect Tides: Station to Station is the sequel to Perfect Tides, both being point-&-click adventure games about Mara Whitefish, a young girl trying to navigate the world of the early 2000s. Perfect Tides takes place over the course of a year in Mara's life; living on the resort island of Perfect Tides which is bustling in the summer and completely empty during the winter months. One of my favorite things about the original Perfect Tides is that in a lot of ways it feels like an exercise in experiencing vulnerability. Mara, as a character, is so open about her thoughts and feelings and chases both despite how impossible realizing any of it feels; it can be hard to see her try so hard through it all as she's trying to find connection on web forums and in the real world. This can lead to a lot of second hand embarrassment for the player as Mara constructs situations to embarrass herself in completely unprompted, but it becomes heart wrenching as she barrels down any alleyway that might potentially lead to some sort of self-actualization. These moments are much harder to sit through than any of the conversational mishaps. But what really makes Perfect Tides hit is how well these degrees of severity blend into each other in a steady flow. In these ways Perfect Tides: Station to Station seems to fall into a similar place, but we follow Mara in her freshman years of college away from home in the The Big City, with a whole new set of people to make bad first impressions with.

Perfect Tides: STS is lush with effortless flavor text and charming dialogue, it's honestly kind of astounding how much there is to look at and read—if a movie came out around the year 2003 in the U.S. I will bet money you will find a reference to it in this game. So much of the game is referential to the real world, and you might jump to the conclusion that it's the 'point-at-the-tv' type of gratification for a millennial audience, but actually I'm finding it quite charming, even as someone who Wasn't There.

Not only that, so much of the game revolves around developing Mara's strange brain into the writerly intellect that she so desperately desires; and so we get to make her read books, and watch movies, and talk to strangers about where to get drugs in order to complicate these ideas in her head resulting in a bank of subjects to inform her writing. These are gameplay mechanics, really cool ones that help enrich the rhythm of pointing-and-clicking that, admittedly, wasn't my favorite part of the original game. It's really exciting.

What hasn't changed is the fact that you (probably) know better than Mara. The game is almost Princess Maker-esque (sorry) in how you kind of become obsessed with trying to steer her in the right direction. But, making the "smartest" choice sometimes cause Mara more grief than anything. It's super easy to blow of Mara's annoying long distance boyfriend, but she herself hates it so you feel compelled to find a balance between the two hoping that she won't go through so much hurt.

I'm really tired so I have to stop but I'm really looking forward to everything this game has to offer.