Publisher: Three Bees
Developer: Three Bees
Year: 2022
Platform: Windows, Mac

Rating: 7

I was sixteen years old when AOL, instant messaging, and chat rooms became popular, and for a good year I often felt more connected to the strangers I met there than I did to anyone in real life. I could be myself and nobody would judge me, and how dare anyone suggest these weren’t real friends. Mara Whitefish, the star of Perfect Tides, finds herself in the same boat and it’s sinking fast in this raw but endearing look at what being a teenager at the turn of the century was like for many people.

Perfect Tides is the name of the island town where fifteen year-old Mara and her family live. Her father recently died, her mother is struggling to pay the bills, and her older brother is avoiding looking for a job. As the game begins, Mara’s best friend Lilly tells her that she just lost her virginity, which completely throws her and ignites her belief that she is a loser and nobody likes her. With all that going on, she has to bring home the groceries (that she bought on the mainland), argue with her brother, and try to convince her mom that her brother is the one being the jerk.

And so it goes as you spend a year in Mara’s life, lost and depressed and self-absorbed. You’ll need to check in on her fan-fiction forums and kindle an on-line romance with STaggle, whom Mara can only imagine as a stately deer. You’ll take her through the motions at school, a place where she experiences some legit trauma while also believing even the super nice kids hate her guts. Then there’s checking in on your older gay writer friend who lives in a beach house (paid by his boyfriend) alone. And while all that’s going, you need to help her navigate the despair at home, where her brother makes a unilateral decision to cut her off from the internet (for her own good) and her mom tries to be understanding while mostly staring off into space.

Playing as Mara is a detached experience for sure. In most games, even with fleshed-out protagonists, you often feel a part of the main character, making decisions that you’d want to make yourself to shape the story. There’s little of that here, watching in frustration as Mara sabotages her friendships and her grades. When others show affection or gratitude towards her (including her own mother), she either doesn’t trust it or runs away from it believing she doesn’t deserve it. And it’s presented in such a realistic way that it brought back to the surface my own struggles in high school.

Thankfully, the story isn’t all doom and gloom. Mara has some truly positive experiences, including following in her father’s footsteps for a vegetable growing contest, getting on Total Request Live with her friend Lilly, and starting her first real-life romance. Even with all the pain and grief, hope and tenderness is everywhere as well. I was genuinely invested in Mara’s life. And the game is funny. Standard point-and-click verb actions are used, and if you use the “hand” icon on Mara, she responds with, “Maybe later.” Her brother proudly defends his “job” selling gold on Ultima. And that’s just in the game’s first five minutes.

Inventory puzzles abound, some more creative than others. My favorite, though not that difficult, entails figuring out how to get around your brother’s tyranny to get your internet turned back on. Unfortunately, several puzzles are easy to miss, to the point that you might not even realize they exist (as in my case), which can then lead you down the path of the game’s not-so-great ending. Given how much the game focuses on story, it’s a shame something so arbitrary can lead you down a different path. In one instance, I finally noticed a puzzle and began working it, but it was too late in the game to finish it due to the predetermined time advance system.

The graphics are bright, heavy on various shades of blue befitting the setting. The characters are oversized relative to their surroundings, especially their heads and eyes. I originally steered away from playing this as I found them too goofy to take seriously, but they surprisingly don’t take anything away from the drama. In fact, the faces are animated so well that the emotional moments hit pretty hard. The background music is generally breezy and gentle, and there’s a distinctly loud sound effect when an action you’ve taken scores a point.

My lower rating of the game (compared to many other reviews) probably reflects the unfortunate path I took that led me to the worst ending, which was utterly unsatisfying. While I replayed the game with a walkthrough to get the best ending (which is deservedly heartwarming), it probably didn’t hit the way it would had I found it the first time. Even so, I enjoyed being brought back to a time in my life that I thankfully will never return to.