Ah, the modern tech-journalism ritual: playing a video game for twenty minutes and immediately concluding that the protagonist is your long-lost twin because you both own a laptop and have a tenuous relationship with eye contact. The latest installment of “I’m in This Photo and I Don’t Like It” comes to us via a review of *Perfect Tides: Station to Station*, a game where the protagonist, Mara, moves to “the City” to be—wait for it—a writer. Groundbreaking. Truly, the literary world hasn’t seen such a daring leap of imagination since the last three thousand coming-of-age novels written by Brooklyn residents.

If you’ve ever wondered why indie games are increasingly indistinguishable from a liberal arts thesis, look no further than the claim that being “seen” is the pinnacle of the medium. Let’s dissect the logic of the “uncomfortably seen” gamer.

First, let’s address the “relatability” of moving to a city to be a writer. Identifying with a character because they moved to a metropolis to pursue “the arts” is like identifying with a pigeon because you both like bread. It is the default setting for 90% of the creative class. It’s not “piercing specificity”; it’s a demographic census. If the protagonist had moved to a rural town to become a competitive tractor puller while struggling with a niche addiction to antique thimbles, that would be “specific.” Moving to “the City” to write is just a Tuesday for anyone who has ever tweeted about their coffee order.

Then we have the “incredibly sharp writing” that captures social anxiety. In the world of game criticism, “sharp writing” is often code for “the character says the self-deprecating things I think to myself while I’m standing awkwardly at the snack table of a house party.” The article suggests that Mara is drawn with a level of nuance rarely seen in media. But let’s be real: portrayal of social anxiety in indie games has become its own tired trope. We’ve reached a point where “being awkward” is a personality substitute. Is the writing sharp, or is it just echoing the specific brand of 2010s Tumblr-era neurosis that the audience has been conditioned to mistake for profound insight?

Then there’s the praise for “minimalist mechanics.” This is the industry’s favorite euphemism for “there isn’t actually much to do.” The summary notes the game consists mostly of conversations and “a few puzzles.” In any other genre, “minimalist mechanics” would be called “lack of content.” But in the realm of the “coming-of-age adventure,” if you aren’t doing anything except clicking through text boxes, it’s considered an artistic choice that forces you to sit with your feelings. It’s a visual novel with the audacity to make you walk from the left side of the screen to the right just so you can’t finish it in thirty minutes. Calling this a “point-and-click adventure” is technically true in the same way that clicking “Accept” on a Terms of Service agreement is a “digital journey.”

The assumption underlying this entire critique is that the goal of art is to act as a mirror for the consumer’s own mundane life. If you feel “uncomfortably seen” by a pixelated girl in a sequel to a cult indie hit, perhaps the discomfort isn’t coming from the “sharp writing.” Perhaps it’s the realization that your life’s narrative arc is so predictable it can be simulated by a 2D sprite with a “minimalist” set of interaction triggers.

While *Perfect Tides: Station to Station* might be a lovely piece of interactive fiction, let’s stop pretending that being a writer who moves to a city is a unique psychological profile. It’s a LinkedIn bio. If we really want to be “seen,” maybe we should look for characters who challenge us, rather than characters who just confirm that we were, indeed, awkward in our twenties. But hey, at least the SEO for “relatable indie games” is thriving. That’s the real coming-of-age story here.