This week on Post Games:
Act 1: Turning Your Life into a Game
Act 2: Recreating a Place and a Moment
Patreon Bonus: The History of Memoir Games in 5 Titles
Act 3: News of the Week
Guest: Meredith Gran, creator of Perfect Tides: Station to Station
Closing Music: Perfect Tides: Station to Station
Upcoming Mini-Episode: An extra special bonus for Patreon subscribers. On the launch day of Station to Station, January 22nd, I’ll release an additional mini-episode in which Meredith and I talk about the game’s themes, twists, and ending. It was incredible to chat with a game creator without the fear of spoilers, to actually dig deep into the work and their intentions. You’ll love it!
Over the past 15 years, a new subgenre has been gestating: autobiographical video games.
Autobiographical flourishes are as old as video games themselves, but as a holistic style, autobiography took root in the early 2010s. Some early entries blurred the line between fantastical fiction and something more personal. Take, for example, Papo & Yo, an adventure game released on PlayStation 3 in 2012, in which a monster’s addiction to poisonous frogs represents a father and his alcoholism.
At this time, it felt as if the smaller a game’s budget, the more willing its creators were to put themselves into their work. Tiny teams, and often solo creators, chronicled their experiences with online dating, gender dysphoria, and the loss of a child to cancer.
Despite this burst of experimentation, by the late 2010s, following rampant harassment of game developers on social media in the wake of GamerGate, autobiographical projects shrank. The most interesting work happened in text-forward micro games built in tools like Twine. And for a moment, it seems the style might have been a temporary trend, rather than a lasting pillar of popular gaming storytelling.
However! In the 2020s, following the COVID-19 pandemic, and presumably many artists spending a profound amount of time with themselves, the autobiographical games have returned.
This category has never received a proper name. In reviews, interviews, and developer notes, people have used terms like the journal game, the personal game, and the non-fiction game.
I call them memoir games. Memoir feels more intimate, human, and a little voyeuristic — something that can’t be removed from these games’ appeal
A memoir game may be a memoir in the truest sense, a non-fiction story through which the author recalls experiences as they happened. Like 2025’s Despelote. However, I see the term memoir game as more expansive, allowing for fantastical fictional stories too, like the aforementioned Papo & Yo. The memoir game also contains games written in the style of autofiction, stories in which the author might modify certain details of their life experience, or even imagine entire characters or moments, in pursuit of a greater truth. Like the Perfect Tides series.
My latest guest is Meredith Gran, the creator of Perfect Tides: Station to Station. Station to Station is the second entry in the series. That said, you don’t have to have played the original, about an emo, terminally online teenager’s life on Fire Island, NY, in the year 2000, to enjoy Station to Station, which is about an indie rock aspiring writer attending college in Manhattan in 2003.
That timeline’s specificity isn’t an accident. Though the game follows the fictional character Mara, it borrows liberally from its creator’s life.
I’ll let my feelings be clear up top. Station to Station is one of the best games of the 2020s. And that I was an indie rock-loving aspiring writer attending college in Manhattan in 2004, a year after this game is set… well, I confess that might influence my opinion.
In the episode, I chat with Meredtih Gran about creating a game based on her life. How one person’s ultra-specific experiences can help someone recall their own. What it’s like to revisit your college self. Why’s it important to talk about bad sex. And how do you turn your worst breakup into a boss fight?
Act 1: The Pleasures and Pains of a Memoir Game
Octopus Pie, #001 (Octopus Pie)
Perpsective and Time in Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie (The Comics Journal)
Perfect Tides (Steam)
Perfect Tides: Station to Station (Steam)
Growing up on Perfect Tides with Meredith Gran (Kritiqal Care)
Memoir (Wiki)
Autofiction: What It Is and What It Isn’t (Publisher’s Weekly)
Second-person narration (Merriam-Webster)
Fast Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins (Penguin Randomhouse)
Act 2: Recreating a Place and a Moment
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin (Archive.org)
Veseleka (Veseleka)
The 1926 Yiddish Art Theatre -- 181 2nd Avenue (Daytonian in Manhattan)
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (Wiki)
Fire Island (Wiki)
Patreon Bonus: 5 Great Memoir Games
Dys4ia (itch.io)
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters by Anna Anthropy (Penguin Randomhouse)
On dys4ia's return (itch.io)
Cibele (Steam)
Papo & Yo (Steam)
A Monster, but No Epic Battle (NYTimes)
That Dragon Cancer (Steam)
The biographical video games playing at real life (The Guardian)
Despelote (Steam)
Act 3: News of the Week
What are Americans’ New Year’s resolutions for 2026? (YouGov)
The Video Game Library (thevideogamelibrary.org)
Good Game, No Rematch (Harper Collins)
Boss Fight Books (bossfightbooks.com)
Hurt Me Plenty: The Ultimate Guide to First-Person Shooters 2003–2010 (Bitmap Books)
You’re Not Overthinking It (Lost in Cult)
How a Game Lives (Harper Collins)
Song of the Week: "Library" from Perfect Tides" Station to Station
This Week in Video Game Links
"That looks stupid." How Harmonix made The Beatles: Rock Band (Design Room)
"We are developing this to be the 'Masterpiece' version" Dragon Quest 7's producer on taking a scalpel to the structure of a classic (Eurogamer)
Pathologic 3 is the great Russian novel told as a video game, and a timely critique of intellectualism (Eurogamer)
Inverse ‘Divests From Gaming’ As Owner Pivots To ‘Next Generation Influence Company’ (Kotaku)
Bethesda's former Elder Scrolls loremaster on why he left, Starfield's 'communication breakdowns', and how he wanted The Elder Scrolls 6 'to be The Empire Strikes Back' (PCGamer)
Free Game of the Week: Tropic of Dinosaur
Another memoir game! From the summary: “This game poem is a reflection of my own aging, excitement about the past, about life, the world around me, my anxiety about how I’ve been living my life, and if I ever was a master of my own being or always have been dragged by somebody or something.” (GamePoems.com via WarpDoor)
What Else I’m Enjoying
In English for the first time, queer classic Stop!! Hibari-Kun! is more relevant than ever (AV Club)
A killer weekly round-up of writing about comics and graphic novels (The Comics Journal)
Women are feral for Heated Rivalry. What does that say about men? (The Guardian)
Top Ten by Year: 1949 Zine (#9) (PRE-ORDER, ships mid-January) (Femniaridens on Etsy)