Are you struggling to get the “Jason sort of cares” achievement in Perfect Tides? Look no further! While the dev’s official livestreams may provide some tips, this achievement can be particularly tricky and not as straightforward as others. This guide aims to help you out and hopefully make it easier for you to unlock this achievement.
How this achievement works
This system is not related to the ingame “points” system that is displayed in the pause screen, it is totally invisible to the player.
Getting the required “affinity” points with characters who have them as a mechanic will reward you with more content in the form of extra dialogue, an extra scene, or a character appearing where they wouldn’t otherwise at the end of the game. Most typically, this system is intuitive and will mostly consist of talking to a given character every chance you get and picking the nicer dialogue options when available (this is how you get the achievements for Lily, Robert, and Jackson)
Jason, however, can be more like a puzzle sometimes. He finds Mara “cute” and likes it when you act a certain, usually more innocent, way. This interestingly reveals even more about his character through the meta system of his relationship score, but enough yapping. Here’s a collection of the positive (and negative) point areas for Jason.
Spring
However, a choice that you do make in Spring can prevent you from getting a point with Jason further down the line.
In fall you will need a total of $6 to buy a coffee. If you are following a walkthrough this won’t be a problem, but make sure you “buy” a egg sandwich on day 2 at the stationary store above where your mother drops you off. It may seem counter intuitive, but this allows you to get more money later on, and doesn’t actually spend any of your money.
To get this, you must first look at the sandwich menu with the eye tool to see what they’re serving and then talk to Sabrina, the girl working the counter. This will NOT spend the $5 you just got from your mom, as Mara tells Sabrina to put it on her mom’s tab instead.
Eat half of the sandwich now (performed by just using the item on Mara from your inventory) and save the rest for later.
You could skip this step if you don’t use your $5 from mom to buy glitter markers from Daniel, but its still good insurance either way in case you miss the extra dollar down the line.
Jason does not appear again until Fall and no more decisions will affect his affinity before his reappearance, so we will skip right past Summer.
Fall
DAY 1:
If you did spend the $5 from mom on glitter markers at Daniel’s store, you will need another dollar for coffee tonight. If you didn’t spend the $5 AND you got the egg sandwich, you can skip this step. Unless you want extra story content for Simon.
Grab the red floppy disk out of the sand. This is on the screen between the helipad and the forest.
You can optionally view the contents of this disk on your own computer at home, but either way bring it to Simon afterwards. He will take it from you and reward you with a dollar.
Later today, when you are prompted to talk to your manager Paul for your pay, give him the other half of the egg sandwich you’ve been saving. He will then fork over another $5. You should now have $6 in total if you bought the glitter markers or $11 dollars in total if you didn’t. There is no other opportunity in the game to spend money, so you might as well have bought the markers.
NIGHT 1:
You should now be at the party. Talk to Amanda first thing and she will offer to grab you a coffee for $6. Accept her offer, as your interactions with Jason will be different if you are hopped up on caffeine and this will earn you an affinity point for him.
DAY 3:
No affinity points can be earned or lost for Jason on day 2 or night 2, so we’ll skip right to day 3.
Jason will appear outside of the school after you confront Justin about starting the rumor. Talk to him and make sure to choose “change the subject” for a point.
NIGHT 3:
On the couch after telling Jason and Robert that today is your birthday, choose the dialogue option “this is a party for me” for another point.
DAY 5:
Day 4 and night 4 have no bearing on affinity points for Jason. Jason and Robert will appear in your room after getting the guitar from mom. When showing Jason the guitar, choose “play the intro from ‘no scrubs'” for affinity
Night 5 has no bearing on affinity. Some people have said that accepting/denying the beer at Simon’s will affect Jason’s affinity, but the developer has confirmed that this is not the case.
Winter
As an important side note, reading the girlmag that Lily gives to you at the beginning of the season will affect the way that you talk to Robert and Jason in some scenes and this may LOSE you an affinity point with Jason and prevent you from getting the achievement. This is not 100% confirmed to be the case, as even the developer couldn’t remember if it was, but read at your own risk.
NIGHT 2:
When you’re taken to the shady motel room with Robert and Jason, choose “stay where you are” attempting to deny James’s advances.
If you’ve followed this guide correctly, you should now get a unique scene in the car with Jason afterwards where Jason mentions your dad and the achievement will pop.
If you followed this guide to the letter and still did not get this scene or the achievement, then make sure you talk to Jason every available opportunity throughout the game in case an affinity point is locked behind a random missable interaction with no dialogue choice.
But if you did get the achievement, good job! Enjoy the unique scene! And I hope you enjoyed Perfect Tides as much as I did.
And that wraps up our share on Perfect Tides: How to get the “Jason sort of cares” achievement. If you have any additional insights or tips to contribute, don’t hesitate to drop a comment below. For a more in-depth read, you can refer to the original article here by ten thousands of rats, who deserves all the credit. Happy gaming!