If you’d asked me a few weeks ago what kind of games I liked to play, point-and-clicks would not have appeared on the list. They always seemed so far from the combat-oriented, fast-paced RPGs I tend to lean toward, and I’d more or less dismissed the entire genre as boring. The fall 2025 trailer for Perfect Tides: Station to Station finally led me to challenge that belief, drawing me in with its witty dialogue and expressive art style.
I still wasn’t expecting much. After all, how could a 2D point-and-click ever be as enjoyable as the likes of Final Fantasy XIV or Horizon Zero Dawn?
Never in my life have I been so spectacularly, pleasantly, wrong.
“It’s you, Mara Whitefish.”
Perfect Tides: Station to Station was developed and published by Three Bees, Inc., a solo indie studio founded by Meredith Gran. Gran began her career as a storyteller with Octopus Pie, a webcomic series that ran from 2007 to 2017. During this time, Gran also wrote and illustrated the Adventure Time mini-series Marceline and the Scream Queens. The hit spinoff was nominated for the Eisner Award in 2013, which is widely considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. (I definitely knew that before writing this.)
Gran began her foray into video games in 2018, when she began developing the first iteration in the Perfect Tides series. After a successful Kickstarter campaign and four years of development, the game was released in 2022 and received with high praise, garnering almost entirely positive reviews on Steam. Gran wasted very little time before starting work on the sequel, and began fundraising for Perfect Tides: Station to Station in the summer of 2022.
“And how much are mints?”
Perfect Tides: Station to Station follows a year in the life of Mara Whitefish, an 18-year-old writer learning to balance college, work, romance, friendships, and existential crises. While playing as Mara, you must navigate the highs and lows of young-adult life, wading through heartbreak, struggling through imposter syndrome, and savoring success. As you make your way through the seasons, you’ll discover that life, love, and remembering to return library books are all far more complicated things than you realize.
Depending on what you choose to read and research throughout the game, Mara’s knowledge and understanding will evolve, affecting the quality of her writing and her available conversation topics. Certain experiences will also expand her views, leading to new outlooks on life and a deeper understanding of herself and the world around her.
“All gone, in one dare.”
Throughout the majority of the Perfect Tides: Station to Station, the gameplay is fluid and simple. The controls are easy to navigate, using varied clicks to prompt conversations, ask questions, or inspect objects and backgrounds, but I did have a few gripes. Some of the puzzle solutions were irritatingly easy to miss, and there were instances where I had to stop and come back later to avoid feeling frustrated. Point-and-clicks are known for being somewhat confusing in this sense, but I still would have loved to see a hint or “stuck” system, just to avoid the interruption.
While the game is technically a point-and-click adventure, it plays much like a visual novel, in that most of the gameplay ends up as simply sitting back and reading. I know that sounds like a negative, but I actually felt it worked in the game’s favor. It leaves space for the player to focus on and appreciate its crowning glory: the writing.
Having worked on Octopus Pie for an entire decade, it’s no surprise that Meredith Gran has some serious storytelling skills — but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t impressed. Gran has an incredible depth of understanding and insight into her characters, resulting in a nuanced, layered, and delightfully complicated cast that supports an emotional story and perfectly achieves the first cardinal rule of fiction: making your characters feel real. Mara’s introspective moments are where this becomes more obvious, showcasing her unique yet relatable way of processing the world around her and allowing the player to immerse themselves in her mind.
“Back to your life of transient things.”
Pixel art can often be limited, but Gran has expertly utilized the style to design expressive characters, detailed backgrounds, and smooth, skillful animations. It’s simplistic compared to the 3D-rendered, demanding kind of graphics that are so common these days, but doesn’t take away from the game’s emotional impact. An especially charming detail I noticed were the decorated window borders that appear in certain locations — look at the mini-trains!
The art is complemented by a nostalgic soundtrack that creates a peaceful environment in which to experience the story. It’s pleasant to listen to, but not so overpowering that it interrupts your enjoyment of the visuals. The full soundtrack was composed by Daniel Kobylarz, who also scored Castle Dornstein, Metaphobia, and the Kathy Rain series. Kobylarz sticks to a consistent, overarching tone throughout the game that matches that of the themes and genre. While I wouldn’t personally listen to it at leisure, each track fits the environment and time in which it plays, and effectively sets the mood.
“You’re strange, and you know it. You’re not easy to love.”
Since I’m sworn to partial secrecy, I don’t want to reveal too much of the story. But I did want to mention a specific scene that plays during the first chapter. Please note that if you haven’t played the game, this section will contain spoilers!
Perfect Tides: Station to Station touches on a variety of sensitive topics, such as anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, and grief, and it does so with care and understanding. While this comes through several times throughout the game, it stuck out to me the most during Mara’s breakup with Adam. The game hints at his overbearing, manipulative nature before this scene, becoming more obvious toward the end of the chapter, but the severity of it sneaks up on you — much like it does for Mara.
Adam’s presence turns from comforting to poisonous, becoming a suffocating, parasitic shadow that saps away at Mara’s confidence and independence. When the tension comes to a head, Mara decides she can’t take any more and tries to end it. I was expecting a hard-hitting, emotional scene — and I got one. But Gran took it one step further by introducing a heart bar.
You select from available options what you want Mara to say at each turn. Be too abrasive, and Adam twists her certainty into debilitating, self-loathing doubt. Be too gentle, and he coaxes her back to him, promising change. If the hearts reach zero, Mara loses her nerve, and the sequence starts over again.
I had to play through this a few times before I managed to do it; there’s a lot of options and the game doesn’t allow you to save during the scene, which added to the stress, but also felt entirely necessary. Mara needs to think carefully about what she says because she already knows that he’ll turn it against her, that she can’t take it back, so the player shouldn’t be able to either. The whole scenario is so spot-on believable that I found myself feeling genuinely desperate to succeed, and just as relieved as Mara when I finally managed it.
There are lots of moments like this in the game, where the writing hits you where it hurts in the best possible way. It’s clear that Gran has a genuine dedication to her craft, and an equally admirable love and dedication to her characters.
“No place is truly a paradise, except from a distance.”
I enjoyed Perfect Tides: Station to Station far more than I expected I would. It’s gritty, entertaining, and painfully relatable. It’s also very likely changed my opinion on point-and-clicks forever.
For a simple, somewhat emotionally exhausting, story-oriented game, it definitely hits the mark. There are areas where I felt it could have been improved mechanics-wise, and I doubt I’d play through it again, but I do absolutely think it’s worth a try for anyone with an appreciation for storytelling, art, or comically large eyes.
Score: 9.3
Perfect Tides: Station to Station, developed and published by Three Bees, Inc., releases tomorrow, January 22, 2026, for PC and Mac (via Steam). MSRP: $19.99. Version reviewed: PC.
Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the developer.
Darcy loves anything fantasy, sci-fi, or adventure. Her dream is to finish her degree and write her own fantasy book, hopefully squeezing in a few games as she goes. She’s a big fan of games where she gets to fight with cool swords, befriend cute animals, and get lost in the story.
You can read more of her writing on her website: https://darcymaunder.com/
