I have a new appreciation for recording memories and writing down my name on everything I own
I was waiting for this game since the 2020 Game Awards and was not disappointed. Season immerses you into a unique world seamlessly, granting you a lovely balance of freedom and structure as you learn more about your surroundings. This game has so much heart; I haven’t felt this engaged with a game in quite a bit.
Also, I want to start a Polaroid scrapbook now.
Also, I want to start a Polaroid scrapbook now.
“Find a sacred square of earth. Lay down, so you have the dirt at your back. Close your eyes. Close everything. Your ancestors are in that dirt. All the living and all the dead are holding you up. Now Stand. They’re still there, aren’t they? It’s time to move. To entangle yourself everywhere with everyone. So that next time you lay down in the dirt, you will have so much more to tell them.”
As I’m sure many of us can, I recall the time we moved out from our childhood home - the rooms I spent my most formative years and the battle scars they earned through the hustle and bustle of young family life. I’m thinking of my bedroom; my wooden crew bed riddled with teeth marks and Cartoon Network stickers. The pale blue colour of the paint on the walls, frayed and cracked in the areas I gormlessly taped posters without my parents’ permission. The doodles I hid in the corners of the furniture their eyes couldn’t reach, depicting my aspirations for the future, the riches and gifts and moments I’d give to my dearest friends and family. It’s been a good twenty~or-so~ years since I last saw those remnants of my past, and I’m a little stunned in how Season allowed me to think back to them so vividly for the first time in nearly as long. Everything can tell a story, host a spirit of the past - miniscule but never completely insignificant. I wish I could see them again, I wish I had the foresight to have taken photographs or something.
Ultimately, this is what Season: A Letter To The Future is about, sculpting in time out of photographs, sketches and audio recordings. Preserving memories of the world as it stands before a vague concept of calamity threatens to change it. In its opening moments, your character Estelle and her mother are making a pendant to protect Estelle’s mind on the journey ahead. Doing so means Estelle’s mother has to give up five memories of her own. The courtyard where you’re asked to gather your first recordings is staged perfectly. Decorations from a party last night still hang in a tree, and signs of the village’s lived-in past are everywhere. A leisurely stroll to capture all I could of the gorgeous little village, rendered lovingly with painterly oranges and purples.
I couldn’t believe my luck, it’s an amazing start to the game. The establishment of melancholic urgency and the world being rich with cultures and theologies that beg to be preserved for future generations, and the understanding of how frail the mind really is… How eager it seems to omit and alter the past to safeguard ourselves from oversentimentality. Couldn’t have been more captivated. And as my bicycle crested the final stretch of the hilltop, I tip over the edge, letting go of the controller, letting gravity take over and pull me down the long and winding road ahead, I realise that the game is a little special.
Season’s secret weapon is in its journal mechanic - wherein the player can freely personalise the entries afforded to you with custom placements of polaroid photographs you’ve taken, as well as sketches, decals, flora and whatever else you find on your journey. There’s a decent amount of freedom of expression here allowing you to capture the essence of a location however best you see fit. The kicker is that you only have two pages per key location. It can often be all too tempting to just sweep through a videogame map and hoard every shiny collectible like a kinda crow, but imposed upon the journal is a limited framework per key locale that forces you to be mindful of the things you choose to omit. My mind was on hyperdrive during this early stretch of the game; viewfinding striking angles for my photographs and designing the best notebook pages I felt an area deserved, and deciding what records were of the most importance.
Sadly, this doesn’t last too long. Eventually you reach the open-world segment where most of the playtime is spent - Tieng Valley. While clearly a lovingly realised zone filled with historic locales and mindful touches, it introduces a monotonous feeling to its exploration as things become increasingly clear that the scope of the game falls too narrow to match what I was hoping for. This isn’t Kino’s Journey, it’s one episode of Kino’s journey stretched thin over a 5~6 hour playtime. It slows down in its variety of unique stimuli and begins to focus more keenly on the mystery of the sole opposition in the game and their goal of ushering forth the ‘end of the world’. That’s not necessarily a problem on its own, but neither the mystery nor the few remaining citizens of Tieng Valley are all that compelling. The people of the valley are traumatized by memories of past conflicts, and much of life there is centered around how to live with that trauma or forget it completely. Season settles into the most anodyne musings on memory and how people live with the past… the transience of memory and the collective ability to heal. The themes tackled are so broad, it’s hard to pick a message out of all the noise, and it truly doesn’t help that the delivery is so flat. Its focus on small human stories and creative expression is admirable, even as they’re drowned out by a lukewarm plot, and the world’s beauty can’t be overstated. But rather than the meditative, meandering journey its opening suggests, Season gets locked into a single story that centers on the cataclysmic fate approaching its world more than the wonder that already fills it.
I’m disappointed, ultimately, but it was a nice pilgrimage.
As I’m sure many of us can, I recall the time we moved out from our childhood home - the rooms I spent my most formative years and the battle scars they earned through the hustle and bustle of young family life. I’m thinking of my bedroom; my wooden crew bed riddled with teeth marks and Cartoon Network stickers. The pale blue colour of the paint on the walls, frayed and cracked in the areas I gormlessly taped posters without my parents’ permission. The doodles I hid in the corners of the furniture their eyes couldn’t reach, depicting my aspirations for the future, the riches and gifts and moments I’d give to my dearest friends and family. It’s been a good twenty~or-so~ years since I last saw those remnants of my past, and I’m a little stunned in how Season allowed me to think back to them so vividly for the first time in nearly as long. Everything can tell a story, host a spirit of the past - miniscule but never completely insignificant. I wish I could see them again, I wish I had the foresight to have taken photographs or something.
Ultimately, this is what Season: A Letter To The Future is about, sculpting in time out of photographs, sketches and audio recordings. Preserving memories of the world as it stands before a vague concept of calamity threatens to change it. In its opening moments, your character Estelle and her mother are making a pendant to protect Estelle’s mind on the journey ahead. Doing so means Estelle’s mother has to give up five memories of her own. The courtyard where you’re asked to gather your first recordings is staged perfectly. Decorations from a party last night still hang in a tree, and signs of the village’s lived-in past are everywhere. A leisurely stroll to capture all I could of the gorgeous little village, rendered lovingly with painterly oranges and purples.
I couldn’t believe my luck, it’s an amazing start to the game. The establishment of melancholic urgency and the world being rich with cultures and theologies that beg to be preserved for future generations, and the understanding of how frail the mind really is… How eager it seems to omit and alter the past to safeguard ourselves from oversentimentality. Couldn’t have been more captivated. And as my bicycle crested the final stretch of the hilltop, I tip over the edge, letting go of the controller, letting gravity take over and pull me down the long and winding road ahead, I realise that the game is a little special.
Season’s secret weapon is in its journal mechanic - wherein the player can freely personalise the entries afforded to you with custom placements of polaroid photographs you’ve taken, as well as sketches, decals, flora and whatever else you find on your journey. There’s a decent amount of freedom of expression here allowing you to capture the essence of a location however best you see fit. The kicker is that you only have two pages per key location. It can often be all too tempting to just sweep through a videogame map and hoard every shiny collectible like a kinda crow, but imposed upon the journal is a limited framework per key locale that forces you to be mindful of the things you choose to omit. My mind was on hyperdrive during this early stretch of the game; viewfinding striking angles for my photographs and designing the best notebook pages I felt an area deserved, and deciding what records were of the most importance.
Sadly, this doesn’t last too long. Eventually you reach the open-world segment where most of the playtime is spent - Tieng Valley. While clearly a lovingly realised zone filled with historic locales and mindful touches, it introduces a monotonous feeling to its exploration as things become increasingly clear that the scope of the game falls too narrow to match what I was hoping for. This isn’t Kino’s Journey, it’s one episode of Kino’s journey stretched thin over a 5~6 hour playtime. It slows down in its variety of unique stimuli and begins to focus more keenly on the mystery of the sole opposition in the game and their goal of ushering forth the ‘end of the world’. That’s not necessarily a problem on its own, but neither the mystery nor the few remaining citizens of Tieng Valley are all that compelling. The people of the valley are traumatized by memories of past conflicts, and much of life there is centered around how to live with that trauma or forget it completely. Season settles into the most anodyne musings on memory and how people live with the past… the transience of memory and the collective ability to heal. The themes tackled are so broad, it’s hard to pick a message out of all the noise, and it truly doesn’t help that the delivery is so flat. Its focus on small human stories and creative expression is admirable, even as they’re drowned out by a lukewarm plot, and the world’s beauty can’t be overstated. But rather than the meditative, meandering journey its opening suggests, Season gets locked into a single story that centers on the cataclysmic fate approaching its world more than the wonder that already fills it.
I’m disappointed, ultimately, but it was a nice pilgrimage.
Preserving culture is invaluable to humanity, as traditions can remind us of our past in ways that can inform our future. But not all cultures get that luxury since some naturally die or are purposefully killed. Season: A Letter to the Future explores and gamifies that concept; a novelty in the medium, but one that is let down by its anemic world and lack of purpose or urgency.
Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1260100-season-a-letter-to-the-future-review-ps5-wortth-buying
Read the full review here:
https://www.comingsoon.net/games/reviews/1260100-season-a-letter-to-the-future-review-ps5-wortth-buying
A truly beautiful experience I won't soon forget.
Thinking about forgetting, about mortality, about the impermanence of life, and how precious and important it is to me, of how much pain can be felt in losing it, and how much beauty there is in truly taking the time to SEE it...
Thank you for this.
In the words of the writer, "it's never too late."
Thinking about forgetting, about mortality, about the impermanence of life, and how precious and important it is to me, of how much pain can be felt in losing it, and how much beauty there is in truly taking the time to SEE it...
Thank you for this.
In the words of the writer, "it's never too late."
Subtracted a star cuz no ramps to do stunts on.
I think I've now found some of the words for talking about this game. So I’ll now make an effort to describe why Season: A Letter to the Future might actually be my absolute favorite video game concurrently. An effort I’ll probably return to sometime in the future.
As a person deeply interested in the topic of the archive, the base premise already resonates with me. I think the way a society preserves its history, memories and legacy is very indicative of how that society is structured and which values it upholds. History is not a given, it’s a process of writing and re-writing, at least loosely informed by the archives that hold traces of the past. But those traces aren’t a given either. Whose history does a society decide is worth recording and safeguarding? Whose history is neglected or even getting erased? The archive belongs to the ghosts - but we need it to know who we are and where we came from. There’s an intangible feeling of sadness and loss that comes with these questions, especially when talking from a queer perspective. I’m non-binary – and I do rarely find myself anywhere in what the west calls its history. Season: A Letter to the Future sits somewhere in this entangled mess of historiography, softly and calmly singing its own song.
You'd think that gamifying the process of writing about history would result in a game that you could "100%", in which you could collect all the collectibles and “win” at historiography. But Season isn't that. It's as much a game about what you do not or cannot record as it is one about what you end up recording. The tools you are given to do so are a camera, a microphone, and handwriting (or rather: handwritten prompts). What you record with them is stored in a notebook, which you can freely customize – one page per area or topic is all you are given. It’s way too little to store every information you find. The player is put in the position to center what parts are important to them and what aspects of the current season they want to preserve. They also have the power to assign moral judgements to some events, influencing if and how the next season will remember what happened. The game also adds a clever twist to its setting: It’s set in the context of already having happened. It starts with a person already reading the “finished” notebook. The parts of the game you play are narratively already in the past – this re-focuses who else might be reading the book in the future and what they are taking away from it.
Season is also about what can’t be recorded or written down, about a lot of small or big moments and their atmosphere. The roadtrip-setting of the game is one filled with endings without closure, fitting for a game about recording history. In that aspect, it’s not just about history, but also about living in it. About the people you meet and their right (not) to be remembered. But also about the people you can no longer meet, about the absences felt in this game’s world – which is brilliantly crafted. Through careful sound design, it manages to have a tangibility to it that few games will ever reach. A tangibility that makes you feel the absences even more intensely.
Season’s writing is also incredibly strong and poetic. It uses every inch of its dialogues and monologues to think about history, memory and the emotional depth that reside in those concepts. It’s beautiful. And I think that is the note I want to end on, for now. I don’t want to get into spoilers yet, as I think this game benefits from having no idea what happens next – it’s a roadtrip, after all. But I’ll return to this space, sometime in the future. Because I have so many more words to find and sentences to form about Season: A Letter to the Future.
As a person deeply interested in the topic of the archive, the base premise already resonates with me. I think the way a society preserves its history, memories and legacy is very indicative of how that society is structured and which values it upholds. History is not a given, it’s a process of writing and re-writing, at least loosely informed by the archives that hold traces of the past. But those traces aren’t a given either. Whose history does a society decide is worth recording and safeguarding? Whose history is neglected or even getting erased? The archive belongs to the ghosts - but we need it to know who we are and where we came from. There’s an intangible feeling of sadness and loss that comes with these questions, especially when talking from a queer perspective. I’m non-binary – and I do rarely find myself anywhere in what the west calls its history. Season: A Letter to the Future sits somewhere in this entangled mess of historiography, softly and calmly singing its own song.
You'd think that gamifying the process of writing about history would result in a game that you could "100%", in which you could collect all the collectibles and “win” at historiography. But Season isn't that. It's as much a game about what you do not or cannot record as it is one about what you end up recording. The tools you are given to do so are a camera, a microphone, and handwriting (or rather: handwritten prompts). What you record with them is stored in a notebook, which you can freely customize – one page per area or topic is all you are given. It’s way too little to store every information you find. The player is put in the position to center what parts are important to them and what aspects of the current season they want to preserve. They also have the power to assign moral judgements to some events, influencing if and how the next season will remember what happened. The game also adds a clever twist to its setting: It’s set in the context of already having happened. It starts with a person already reading the “finished” notebook. The parts of the game you play are narratively already in the past – this re-focuses who else might be reading the book in the future and what they are taking away from it.
Season is also about what can’t be recorded or written down, about a lot of small or big moments and their atmosphere. The roadtrip-setting of the game is one filled with endings without closure, fitting for a game about recording history. In that aspect, it’s not just about history, but also about living in it. About the people you meet and their right (not) to be remembered. But also about the people you can no longer meet, about the absences felt in this game’s world – which is brilliantly crafted. Through careful sound design, it manages to have a tangibility to it that few games will ever reach. A tangibility that makes you feel the absences even more intensely.
Season’s writing is also incredibly strong and poetic. It uses every inch of its dialogues and monologues to think about history, memory and the emotional depth that reside in those concepts. It’s beautiful. And I think that is the note I want to end on, for now. I don’t want to get into spoilers yet, as I think this game benefits from having no idea what happens next – it’s a roadtrip, after all. But I’ll return to this space, sometime in the future. Because I have so many more words to find and sentences to form about Season: A Letter to the Future.
Season is a beautiful, contemplative experience, where the moments between gameplay are often more impactful than the gameplay itself. It's in that quiet time, spent biking through the woods and reflecting on what you've just seen, that Season truly comes to life.
Its only real failure is in feeling comparable to better games. I was frequently reminded of other titles like Outer Wilds, Firewatch, and Paradise Killer, all of which have an extra bit of magic that Season is lacking.
Still - this is a good game, and I will be thinking about it for a long time.
Its only real failure is in feeling comparable to better games. I was frequently reminded of other titles like Outer Wilds, Firewatch, and Paradise Killer, all of which have an extra bit of magic that Season is lacking.
Still - this is a good game, and I will be thinking about it for a long time.
Poco más que decir de lo que he dicho en el análisis. Es lo mejor que he jugado en PlayStation 5 y seguramente mi videojuego exclusivo -si es que no llega a salir en Xbox o Switch- de la consola.
This review contains spoilers
Emotionally, this thing pays out like a slot machine, but I found a lot of the mechanical choices to be at odds with the thematic nature of the story.
Specifically, when you find a shrine to a god, I found the mechanics to that scrapbook entry to be a bit esoteric, and not in a fun way.
Maybe this is heresy, but I think I would've liked this more without the scrapbooking: just riding a bike around and talking to folks, which is already the best part of the game. When you help the lady pick things to take with her, the scrapbooking is basically an afterthought, and I thought that was the high point of the experience.
Specifically, when you find a shrine to a god, I found the mechanics to that scrapbook entry to be a bit esoteric, and not in a fun way.
Maybe this is heresy, but I think I would've liked this more without the scrapbooking: just riding a bike around and talking to folks, which is already the best part of the game. When you help the lady pick things to take with her, the scrapbooking is basically an afterthought, and I thought that was the high point of the experience.
jogo lindo!
Unfortunately, Season does little to emphasise the nature of journeys outside of animating vast beautiful landscapes that conform to meanings that impress, homogeneously, the overwritten narrative laboriously pounded into your ears. The talkiness of the story, dully delivered by some sleepy performances that suffer from totally absent direction (or convincing character motivation), completely eats up any sense of player empathy with the characters; the vistas become postcards with absent scrawl on the back, written by a backpacker convinced of the cosmic significance of staying in hostels and eating "local cuisine" served out of tourist traps.
Normally I say, "verbs, not vibes" for designing the delivery of how a game should feel in conveying its tonality, but the aggressive nature with which Season commodifies its world through the gathering purpose (poorly framed as archival bedrocking, something which totally goes against the current efforts of archival practices wresting free of the nature of highly authored "cornerstones" of import in many institutions of the past) it builds all interaction around the vague, ethereal nature of journeying - literally, leaving things behind - is wasted on the acknowledgement of the game as a product. It's not the developers fault that game clipping and sharing is now a highly commercial enterprise external to games as art, but given the antiquity of that facet of community nowadays, they should have realised the optics and feel of such a scaffolded feel when moving through their spaces.
Spaces being here a very general term. The game is sidewalks: paths are enclosured, and any trying to feel less like a zoo animal will immediately bring more to mind the feeling of playing Super Mario Bros than Sable. You can follow motion through forward or back, but regardless of what you feel is pushing you in a direction, the developers do not allow the desires of the player nor of a player narrative to create expectation, payoff, or ambiguity of the journey outside of the highly rote, terribly cliched, experience.
And as a capstone, the animatic cutscenes have some of the worst examples of stealing the component parts of comics to "cut costs" I've ever seen in a game. The lettering is atrociously mechanised, creating a horribly ugly script that has no life or wit to its line, yet it draws all attention to it by being placed in awful MS paint ovals that consider not at all the composition of the frame they are put in. The models at rest in each 'frame' are not composed on beats of the scene, but at dim relaxations of muscle, taking all life out of the image, rendering the screen a puppet show lost for a puppeteer.
Normally I say, "verbs, not vibes" for designing the delivery of how a game should feel in conveying its tonality, but the aggressive nature with which Season commodifies its world through the gathering purpose (poorly framed as archival bedrocking, something which totally goes against the current efforts of archival practices wresting free of the nature of highly authored "cornerstones" of import in many institutions of the past) it builds all interaction around the vague, ethereal nature of journeying - literally, leaving things behind - is wasted on the acknowledgement of the game as a product. It's not the developers fault that game clipping and sharing is now a highly commercial enterprise external to games as art, but given the antiquity of that facet of community nowadays, they should have realised the optics and feel of such a scaffolded feel when moving through their spaces.
Spaces being here a very general term. The game is sidewalks: paths are enclosured, and any trying to feel less like a zoo animal will immediately bring more to mind the feeling of playing Super Mario Bros than Sable. You can follow motion through forward or back, but regardless of what you feel is pushing you in a direction, the developers do not allow the desires of the player nor of a player narrative to create expectation, payoff, or ambiguity of the journey outside of the highly rote, terribly cliched, experience.
And as a capstone, the animatic cutscenes have some of the worst examples of stealing the component parts of comics to "cut costs" I've ever seen in a game. The lettering is atrociously mechanised, creating a horribly ugly script that has no life or wit to its line, yet it draws all attention to it by being placed in awful MS paint ovals that consider not at all the composition of the frame they are put in. The models at rest in each 'frame' are not composed on beats of the scene, but at dim relaxations of muscle, taking all life out of the image, rendering the screen a puppet show lost for a puppeteer.
Há diversas coisas que amei em Season: A Letter to the Future, mas uma das principais é que ele não tenta ser um jogo divertido.
Season é contemplativo e reflexivo. Todas as discussões, filosofias e ideias apresentadas podem ser aplicadas não só no nosso mundo, mas no nosso dia a dia. Como enxergamos o tempo? O que é o futuro? Tradição ou progresso? O que significa deixar tudo para trás? O define uma "mudança de época"?
Seu ritmo é bem lento, há poucas ações que o jogador pode fazer, mas a narrativa amarra tudo de forma maravilhosa e emocionante, tudo isso apertando o botão do gravador, tirando uma foto e pedalando uma bicicleta.
Com tudo isso dito (e muito não dito), já coloco Season: A Letter to the Future como um dos meus jogos favoritos de 2023. Joguem!
Season é contemplativo e reflexivo. Todas as discussões, filosofias e ideias apresentadas podem ser aplicadas não só no nosso mundo, mas no nosso dia a dia. Como enxergamos o tempo? O que é o futuro? Tradição ou progresso? O que significa deixar tudo para trás? O define uma "mudança de época"?
Seu ritmo é bem lento, há poucas ações que o jogador pode fazer, mas a narrativa amarra tudo de forma maravilhosa e emocionante, tudo isso apertando o botão do gravador, tirando uma foto e pedalando uma bicicleta.
Com tudo isso dito (e muito não dito), já coloco Season: A Letter to the Future como um dos meus jogos favoritos de 2023. Joguem!
Season is at its best when dealing in broad emotional strokes and focusing on player expression, which for me were both prevalent and strong enough to get me to spend 8 hours in its world in a single day. Framing the camera for perfect photos, capturing audio, and ultimately arranging a narrative of each area in a scrapbook, especially if you buy into the premise of telling the world's story for future generations, is a tantalizing offer. Minor moments reminded me of Sable, though as an expression of a character's journey this doesn't quite live up to that.
Unfortunately, I think a big part of why is because Season also gives a little too much attention to its own presentation of the world's story. Some of the specifics of the plot can get pretty goofy and probably shouldn't have been allowed to interfere with what makes the game work, and the journalistic objectives you're occasionally tasked with are only nice in that they add pages to your journal, not so nice in that there are large portions of them that are effectively already authored. These "mysteries" you can solve are presumably optional, and are likely intended as direction for players who aren't as comfortable with self-motivated goals [or those who want more definitive lore], but pulling on a certain string in the world and being presented with a checklist of objectives isn't a great feeling in a game that otherwise isn't terribly concerned with how you decide to portray the locales.
Which is not to say that the game's authored moments always miss--they can speak poignantly enough to ideas of loss, memory, and lived experience, most effectively in the opening sequence. And the visuals are certainly striking! I'm very glad to have had a pleasant, chill Sunday with it.
Unfortunately, I think a big part of why is because Season also gives a little too much attention to its own presentation of the world's story. Some of the specifics of the plot can get pretty goofy and probably shouldn't have been allowed to interfere with what makes the game work, and the journalistic objectives you're occasionally tasked with are only nice in that they add pages to your journal, not so nice in that there are large portions of them that are effectively already authored. These "mysteries" you can solve are presumably optional, and are likely intended as direction for players who aren't as comfortable with self-motivated goals [or those who want more definitive lore], but pulling on a certain string in the world and being presented with a checklist of objectives isn't a great feeling in a game that otherwise isn't terribly concerned with how you decide to portray the locales.
Which is not to say that the game's authored moments always miss--they can speak poignantly enough to ideas of loss, memory, and lived experience, most effectively in the opening sequence. And the visuals are certainly striking! I'm very glad to have had a pleasant, chill Sunday with it.
A contemplative and easygoing experience for those who like to take in the sights with photo mode and grace. Occasionally awkward, but thoroughly littered with moments that will make players dwell on big questions without the ennui of needing specific answers.
It is a really relaxing game about the passing of time and the stories of people in the world. If you're looking for puzzles or action, there is none, this is more like a walking simulator with photos, sound recording, and biking, but it's just so good. You'll either love it or not.
Season: A Letter to the Future es una experiencia hacia lo desconocido. La experiencia de recorrer un viaje e inmortalizar lo contemplado en ese mismo instante en el que todo sucede y a la vez acaba, el final de una era y el comienzo de una nueva. Todo con el propósito de conocerse a uno mismo y a lo que nos rodea, un legado del pasado y del presente para el futuro.
"Busca un cuadrado sagrado de tierra. Túmbate boca abajo tendida de espaldas. Cierra los ojos. Duerme tus sentidos. [...] Tus antepasados yacen en esa misma tierra. Tanto vivos como muertos te sostienen. Ahora levántate. Siguen ahí ¿verdad que sí? Es hora de avanzar, de conocer nuevos sitios, nuevas personas. Para que cuando vuelvas a la tierra... Tengas mucho mas que contarles."
"Busca un cuadrado sagrado de tierra. Túmbate boca abajo tendida de espaldas. Cierra los ojos. Duerme tus sentidos. [...] Tus antepasados yacen en esa misma tierra. Tanto vivos como muertos te sostienen. Ahora levántate. Siguen ahí ¿verdad que sí? Es hora de avanzar, de conocer nuevos sitios, nuevas personas. Para que cuando vuelvas a la tierra... Tengas mucho mas que contarles."
Um dos jogos mais lindos que já joguei. É aquele tipo de jogo que te lembra como essa mídia pode ser poderosa, é algo único, com uma mensagem linda. Apesar de ter um monento um pouco mais baixo que o resto, e a trilha sonora não ser tão memorável quanto poderia, não impede de ser excelente.
Uma pintura controlável com uma sensibilidade impar.
Uma pintura controlável com uma sensibilidade impar.
I do not yet have the words to describe why I love this game so much. I may never find them. Until then, I'm gonna entangle myself everywhere with everyone, so the next time I lie down in the dirt, I will have so much more to tell you
Very chill and I love dicking around in the scrapbook, but I wish that the gameplay itself was a little meatier y'know?
Pas mon style mais le jeu a clairement ses qualités.
The story its kinda meh and the game its all about story, so...
A lot of small bugs too. Not recommended
A lot of small bugs too. Not recommended
A short but pleasant game about biking through a small valley, documenting its history and people to preserve for the future before the season ends and everything is swept away in a coming flood. The art style is lovely, and I was really into the meditative atmosphere with its focus on simply taking in the moment with photos and drawings. Tieng Valley is an interesting setting to explore for the time you spend in it, and I enjoyed that you’re free to go wherever you like once you arrive
If there’s one notable flaw it’d be performance since there’s quite a few FPS drops throughout that took me out of it a bit. Hopefully this can be patched but otherwise I really enjoyed it
If there’s one notable flaw it’d be performance since there’s quite a few FPS drops throughout that took me out of it a bit. Hopefully this can be patched but otherwise I really enjoyed it
There's magic here for sure in biking through gorgeous landscapes, taking notes and photographs and painstakingly organizing them in your journal. On paper this sounds incredible, in execution I wish more had been done to keep things from becoming just another series of checklists. Feels like a missed opportunity.
Really simple game with a confusing story.
Not as wonderful as the media and other reviews want it to be. It's one of those cases where everyone seems to praise because it is an "intellectual" thing and if you rate it low you are labelled as someone that can't understand the beauty behind it. Whatever.
Not as wonderful as the media and other reviews want it to be. It's one of those cases where everyone seems to praise because it is an "intellectual" thing and if you rate it low you are labelled as someone that can't understand the beauty behind it. Whatever.
Really really loved the world of this game, super beautiful and melancholic.
I would never like a game about coping with loss! Ever! Obviously lol
Fr tho this game is just so effortlessly beautiful, the art style is great and the world feels so distinct and lived in. There are so many little interactions and experiences to be found just from appreciating it's beauty. The characters are wonderful and I cried a lot talking with them tbh.
I don't want to say too much to spoil it but if you need some time in nature, in quiet and connecting with your past, play this game. And then go and touch grass and your community.
ALSO PLAY WITH DUALSENSE IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION I WONT SPOIL WHY BUT KEEP AN EAR OUT
I would never like a game about coping with loss! Ever! Obviously lol
Fr tho this game is just so effortlessly beautiful, the art style is great and the world feels so distinct and lived in. There are so many little interactions and experiences to be found just from appreciating it's beauty. The characters are wonderful and I cried a lot talking with them tbh.
I don't want to say too much to spoil it but if you need some time in nature, in quiet and connecting with your past, play this game. And then go and touch grass and your community.
ALSO PLAY WITH DUALSENSE IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION I WONT SPOIL WHY BUT KEEP AN EAR OUT
One of the more beautiful games I’ve played, and a thing that feels like it was destined to find me at this precise moment of my life, as I grapple with the recent passing of my dad. This gentle journey through the most bittersweet and bucolic post-apocalypse I’ve seen, armed with nothing but a camera, a field recorder, and a bicycle: this is what I needed
Everything in Season is poetry. The familiar world tinged with a hint of magic. The far-reaching thoughts of the main character as she opens her eyes to the life, culture, and history of her surroundings. The understated character work and voice acting. The richly layered thematic material. Here is a game deeply concerned with memory and loss, while always keeping a hopeful, if anxious, eye toward the future. I love the tone that’s captured here so much
Games like this often focus on their writing, their art, their vibes, but Season deserves recognition for the mechanics on display as well. Whipping out a device and capturing a moment feels effortless, and the world has been assembled with such fastidious care that every shot I took felt like a minor masterpiece. I cannot overstate how important this was. Compared to a game like Umurangi, where I rarely felt like I’d actually taken a “good” picture, Season made me feel like a photographic genius. The lighting and composition always fall right into place like magic. I walked away from this thinking “gee maybe I should take up photography!” (I won’t). And although at the start of the game I was worried that assembling the scrapbook might get old and tedious, it never did. I loved finding new ways to arrange the elements of each page, I loved the mix of open-ended and goal-oriented pages, and it was a really special moment to flip back through the whole thing at the end
And then there’s the bicycle: it was such a simple and rich joy to just coast across this world. I also loved how my fingers would actually get a bit tired when biking up hills from having to pump the triggers filled with DualSense tension
I was hoping for just a little bit more from the ending, but this is dangerously close to a perfect game to me
Everything in Season is poetry. The familiar world tinged with a hint of magic. The far-reaching thoughts of the main character as she opens her eyes to the life, culture, and history of her surroundings. The understated character work and voice acting. The richly layered thematic material. Here is a game deeply concerned with memory and loss, while always keeping a hopeful, if anxious, eye toward the future. I love the tone that’s captured here so much
Games like this often focus on their writing, their art, their vibes, but Season deserves recognition for the mechanics on display as well. Whipping out a device and capturing a moment feels effortless, and the world has been assembled with such fastidious care that every shot I took felt like a minor masterpiece. I cannot overstate how important this was. Compared to a game like Umurangi, where I rarely felt like I’d actually taken a “good” picture, Season made me feel like a photographic genius. The lighting and composition always fall right into place like magic. I walked away from this thinking “gee maybe I should take up photography!” (I won’t). And although at the start of the game I was worried that assembling the scrapbook might get old and tedious, it never did. I loved finding new ways to arrange the elements of each page, I loved the mix of open-ended and goal-oriented pages, and it was a really special moment to flip back through the whole thing at the end
And then there’s the bicycle: it was such a simple and rich joy to just coast across this world. I also loved how my fingers would actually get a bit tired when biking up hills from having to pump the triggers filled with DualSense tension
I was hoping for just a little bit more from the ending, but this is dangerously close to a perfect game to me
This game had a really positive effect on me. As someone who likes exploring game worlds and attention to detail, this game had me paying extra attention. Listening to each sound, ready to record. Looking for interesting details, to take pictures of. The whole journal aspect really makes you pay attention to the game's world, and has you asking the same questions as the protagonist.
I would highly recommend this meditative, and beautiful game.
I would highly recommend this meditative, and beautiful game.
A beautiful game that asks you to think about what matters to you. The gameplay and story themes work really well together, where you are taking pictures and recording audio of a world you want to be remembered and making hard decisions about what will go in your journal. You occasionally meet charming characters that bring their own experiences to bear on how you experience the world and record history. Plus, zipping around on a bike with the PS5 haptic triggers is a lot of fun.
Contemplative game