Post Narrascope Landscape
As of June, Perfect Tides: Station to Station has a release date. We’ll see you sooner than you think!
I’m back to work after Narrascope. Although I couldn’t attend the full 3 days, the showcase and talks I got to see were a lot of fun, and I’m eagerly awaiting the VODs of the ones I missed. I will post a link to my own talk when it goes up.
Now that I understand how unique the show is, I’m very honored to have been a part of Narrascope. It would’ve been enough to attend, but Perfect Tides: Station to Station also took home the “Best in Show” showcase award.
Louise was very proud.
My heart swells to know that PT:STS excites both the academic set and the broader gaming audience of PAX. These small windows into the game’s future are very encouraging, but once again I need to narrow my vision for the work ahead.
On that front, June has been very productive. I’ve gotten through quite a few complex animated scenes, and have started delegating assets to the team at a more steady rate. We will probably be working like this for the rest of the year, but it’s getting done, and it’s looking good.
A few side projects are on track as well: Switch development, and the first (of many, hopefully!) localization of Perfect Tides. Hoping to have more to say about this before the summer is out. Stay cool!
Some Housekeeping, and a Quick Dev Update
I’m happy to say that, as of the end of May, the massive game-long playtest of Perfect Tides: Station to Station has ended.
This isn’t the last test the game will need, and there’s a lot of work ahead. But this is the one that tested every feature in the full narrative timeline of the game, and finishing this is a huge milestone.
The brunt of the work from here on out is animation, with which I’m already very busy. There is so much to do that I likely won’t be able to lift my head up for a while. But when I do, I’ll hopefully be able to show off some of the visuals I and the team have put together.
A huge thanks to the playtesters who’ve been working with me on this series of builds since February. It would’ve been hard to call this an entire game just a few months ago, and now I’m quite sure that it is.
Events! Perfect Tides: Station to Station will be in the Women-Led Games showcase as part of Summer Game Fest.
The event begins June 7th, and you will be able to view the showcase on YouTube here.
PT:STS has also been shortlisted for Narrascope’s June 20th showcase. It is up for the Best in Show category, and you can see all the selections here.
Post-PAX Catchup & Octopus Pie Q&A
I’d love to sit down and write proper PAX report, but we’d all be waiting forever, so just a few things in brief:
IGN covered PT:STS in their roundup of games at the PAX Rising Showcase. You can see their gameplay and commentary in this vid. It’s the first game featured, which feels very nice!
The Punished Backlog, The Beat, and Kotaku had nice things to say about the game as well, along with their full report of games featured around the show floor.
Octopus Pie turned 18 on May 14th, and to celebrate I answered some questions on Bluesky. You can see my answers below (though not all questions will embed due to individual privacy settings).
Answers behind the cut.
Today is the 18th anniversary of Octopus Pie, which debuted on May 14, 2007.
AMA and I’ll talk about it today.
[image or embed] — Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Most was improvised as my life changed and new topics became interesting to me. The event before the final chapter was planned almost from the start.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 9:24 AM
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Ollie was my landlord in Brooklyn who lived below me. Very sketch and panicking, out of his depth owning a brownstone, would not let me put an AC in the window in summer. A monster who I still think about a little bit fondly.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 9:27 AM
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Early on I was still building confidence and put less of myself into it, trying more to predict how the audience would react. Later I was better at feeling out what felt urgent to me, and would by extension feel real to the audience.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 10:39 AM
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lol. I was just out of animation school and hands/feet were still very much objects of study for me. As a style choice I just saw it as Hanna’s default “costume” along with the baseball shirt and jeans.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 11:17 AM
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I’ve been very absorbed in my games, but if I got the urge again I would do it. OP stories tend to hit like a virus
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 11:25 AM
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Every character’s name is a joke. Hanna after Hunter, Will is headstrong, Marigold fucks, Jane after a song. The world does not take them seriously.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 11:31 AM
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Briefly considered adapting an Edith Wharton novel. Maybe someday lol, felt too ambitious with video games on my mind.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 11:43 AM
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I felt the strip was losing a lot of its punchy/improvisational quality by my working on lots of pages at once. But at the time it was a welcome change for me and I’m happy with the stories I made that way.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 12:46 PM
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I really think it’s funny when Hanna looks at the painting she’s destroyed and leaves.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 12:52 PM
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Doing fine! It’s a rainy errand day for me and the boy, and I’ll be teaching him about pull-ups later.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 12:53 PM
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The comic was my serious attempt at a career in the first few years. Later it was my serious form of expression. Many things came and went in that time but the comic, was always serious
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 12:56 PM
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It seemed more clear over time that Eve was growing from her failings while Hanna was working hard to maintain. I think the older we get the more we start to see that.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 2:08 PM
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I did not keep track, and forgot what they were supposed to do or even look like many times. Fortunately however I make them is the truth
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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There are reasons I don’t let these worlds mix, chief among them that I think the worlds themselves and the lenses they’re seen through are the fundamentally different part. The characters tend to come from the same places within me
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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No, that was very much a “live among cartoonists” thing for me and unfitting for the characters. But I did write some stories about bike festivals, relationships dissolving over distance, and beermaking that feel specifically Portland era to me.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 3:09 PM
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I really like Just Be Cool Already/You Don’t Need Anything/Vacation Day, which were presented as 3 separate stories but feel unified to me in hindsight.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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I think future stories would need to acknowledge that entire friend groups rarely stay in the big city together. It’s almost certain they would go their separate ways, as they are starting to do in the last follow-up.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 4:20 PM
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Ok lol last one. I pasted these by hand and it’s lovely to see the glitter still in place after all these years. I have no regrets about what was lost in print, it gives me joy to see what has survived.
— Meredith Gran (@meredithgran.com) May 14, 2025 at 4:28 PM
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