Game 8 of 2023 - Season: A Letter to the Future (2023)

Season

Developer: Scavengers Studio
Publisher: Scavengers Studio
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure, Casual, Meditative

Difficulty: Easy
Date Started: Mar 23th 2023
Date Ended: Mar 31st 2023
Hours: 6

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8/10

Another game, another banger. But this isn't a banger in the traditional sense, this is a slow, meditative banger that explores themes of remembering (or forgetting), spirituality, and loss.

You take control of Estelle, a child of prophecy who is tasked with leaving her village to chronicle the end of a Season. A Season is something like an age, or era; past Seasons were sometimes grand (like the Golden Season) or were times of war, like the Season that proceeds the current one.

Estelle gets some worldly advice from her departed father.

Estelle's mission is to go forth and record anything she can for future generations to study. She is armed with a camera, a sketchbook, and an audio recorder. Each area you explore gets its own page in the sketchbook, and you can fill it with pictures you take, sounds you record, and quotes you read.

God, what a shithole.

Season does a remarkable job of letting you discover the world at your own pace. You can take your time and mosey around an area, taking in the sights and filling your sketchbook with pictures and sketches as you like. As you explore the world recording the current era for future generations, you begin to piece together the events of the previous eras through contextual clues and conversations with NPCs. Estelle's world is familiar yet alien; taking place in what at first seems like a near future Earth after some grave conflict, but beneath the surface lies an ancient, magical place where prayers to weathered stone gods go answered in desperate times.

Season is a joy to explore. Mostly.

Season excels in atmosphere. The lovely, cell-shaded art, epic landscapes, and ambient soundtrack help enhance the mystery of Estelle's realm, and I felt the same sense of discovery she felt as she uncovered more and more of the past.

You get a bicycle at the beginning of the game which definitely helps you get around. If I had a criticism, it's that the game has some collision issues. So many collision issues that the menu has an 'unstuck' option in case you get caught in the world geometry. Which is going to happen, I guarantee. Also, navigating around Estelle's sketchbook took a little getting used to.

My playthrough of Season only lasted six hours are so, but they were a satisfying six hours. This is definitely getting a recommendation out of me!