Station to Station is a Unique Take on Point and Click

If you were making a new game in the point-and-click genre, how would you make it unique? Game developer Meredith Gran had some ideas for her next title, Perfect Tides: Station to Station. The PAX East 2025 demo showcased how having conversations and forging relationships could help one level up in life.

Perfect Tides: Station to Station is the sequel to Perfect Tides. If you never played the original, don’t worry; you can play the sequel without prior knowledge. Station to Station is a coming-of-age story where you control Mara, an 18-year-old writer exploring a big city while trying to transition into adulthood. The game mixes the mechanics of a point-and-click with RPG elements in an intriguing way. By conversing with city denizens, you’ll pick up different ideas you can record in your phone. These take the form of people and places and act like items. You can use these people and places as topics of conversation when you talk to NPCs, which helps advance the story. The idea of leveling up Mara through this abstract convention helps Station to Station stand out from its peers.

Navigating the city in Station to Station proved easy enough, although at one point, I was confused about where to go next. This is not to detract from the title’s controls. It eschews the traditional point-and-click format (there are no multiple tabs like “Look At” or “Talk To” to be found). Talking to citizens and bringing up topics of conversation was streamlined perfectly. There are also decisions you must make throughout the story, which can affect how Mara grows as a person and the game’s ending. Though my session was short, I advanced to the second part of the game. I had to use my intuition and detective skills to figure out how to make it to a party where I didn’t know the host’s name. This game really does showcase the awkwardness of being a teenager.

I enjoyed Perfect Tides: Station to Station, even at a crowded convention. Its grounded story pulls at the heartstrings, which makes sense because it is deeply personal for creator Meredith Gran. Players can expect an adventure that takes place over the course of a year and lasts about 16 hours. Keep an eye out for the adolescent experience when it launches sometime in the future on Nintendo Switch and PC.