In recent years we have developed a great love for a very specific type of exploration games. We refer to those in which we are discovering the history of a world as we travel through it. We had a great time deciphering ancient languages in Heaven’s Vault and revealing secrets in the sands of Sable. Now there is a new game in this same style that has a lot of prestige behind it and the support of Sony itself, which included it in his list of most anticipated games for PlayStation of 2023. This has made our expectations towards Season: A letter to the future be quite tall.
This game couldn’t be more different from the previous title from Canadian team Scavengers Studio. Darwin Project it was a battle royale and survival game with a somewhat cruel tone. But this new work focuses on completely opposite elements and tries to show us the importance of memory to live in community.
A prophetic dream dictates that the season is about to end. Everything is going to change. Before the end comes, we decided to go on a cycling trip around the world to document the season before it ends. We will get to know its people, its landscapes and everything that could be forgotten when the time comes.
In Season: A letter to the future We go through different scenarios taking photos, recording sounds, talking with other characters and enjoying relaxing bike rides. There are no enemies to face or hide from. There are also no time limits or health to lose. It’s a fairly laid-back experience that offers different charms than most video games.
let’s clarify once that this isn’t exactly an open world game. During the first part of the adventure we go through levels looking for everything that catches our attention to document it in our diary. When we put a certain number of items on each page, we unlock a “conclusion” on the area and more decorations. However, it is not mandatory to do so to continue.
Once we leave a zone behind, we can’t go back, but there is one important exception. A little over half of the game takes place in a place called the Valley of Tien. This is a huge area that we can roam freely and has several areas that have their own pages in the journal. There are also some pages dedicated to some of the “mysteries” that we find in the game and that we complete by taking photos of specific objects or collecting certain documents. This is not necessary to advance either, but it helps to better understand this curious world.
Part of the fun of Season: A letter to the future is that each player will end the game —something that takes around 6 hours— with a very different diary than the others. What caught our attention and we decided to photograph it will not be the same as what others put on the pages and they surely arranged everything differently. Some will create truly artistic collages and others will paste as many objects as possible without any apparent order.
Going through the maps by bicycle is very satisfying. This is easily controlled and reaches good speed, but the best thing is the way we “feel” it through the PS5 DualSense control. The resistance in the triggers when pedaling and the subtle vibrations that represent the terrain feel especially good.
When we are not on a bicycle, the protagonist moves quite slowly. In fact, the speed at which she runs is the same as we walk at in other games. This is done on purpose because Season: A letter to the future It is not a title that should be played with eagerness. The developers want us to take our time in each setting, appreciate the beauty of the landscapes, reflect on what we find, and think about what it means when a season is coming to an end.
This isn’t necessarily a “poetic” game—which is how we describe titles like Gris– but if is full of poetry. The inhabitants of this world can get sick through their dreams and memories, which lends itself to deep reflections on the passage of time, the places and the people we left behind. Some will find these pretentious ideas, but we found them quite beautiful. They even immersed us in our own reflections on life, the past and the future.
It is more than clear that Season: A letter to the future It is a very beautiful game, well-intentioned and with interesting systems. But it does not finish fulfilling its narrative and mechanical objectives. The end of the game feels abrupt. It comes at a time when we’re excited about the new settings we were supposed to explore, but that’s when we see the credits roll. In a way, it “sabotages” its own plot. Some decisions we make in the game can slightly affect the ending, but not enough to encourage another game.
The protagonist’s plans to explore the world and document the season that is coming to an end are half done. We don’t know if this was the goal of the developers, but we have the annoying impression that the game had a bigger scope and that they wanted us to explore more open areas like the Valley of Tien, but time or budget didn’t allow to implement more things and they had to cut the story. This is just a guess, but it’s what we feel after playing.
Another aspect of the game that we didn’t like was how inconsistent the character design is. The protagonist and her mother, the first we meet, have realistic proportions, but we soon find ourselves with huge, highly cartoonish characters that don’t fit well with the other ideas presented by the game. Although most of the English voice actors are very good, there are a couple that are bland and that, combined with the fact that none of them move their mouths when speaking, has a bad effect.
Speaking of voices, they are not dubbed into Spanish, but the translation of texts is quite good. Most of them manage to retain their poetic nature by switching to our language. It’s a good localization job.
The last of the defects to mention are the inevitable ‘bugs’. It was common for the camera to be positioned so that an object was between it and the action, blocking our view, and in some cases even obstructing the menus. We also got stuck on geography when riding the bike and were forced to exit the game and reload the game to get moving again. Of course, keep in mind that we tested a preliminary version and it is possible that all this has been corrected for the launch of the game.
Season: A letter to the future left us somewhat unsatisfied. Undoubtedly is a good game that will especially please those who are looking for a calm exploration experience and who like to appreciate virtual environments. However, we feel incomplete. This cycling adventure could show and teach us much more than what finally made it to our screens.
Although we had a great time during our brief time with Season: A letter to the futureWe cannot say that we are satisfied. It is not that there is a problem with its short duration, but that its approach promised a greater adventure and we do not feel that its narrative had reached a good conclusion. Still, we can recommend it to those who want a stress-free adventure of exploration and are in the mood to reflect on the purpose of memory, the past, and the future.
Review made using a digital copy of Season: A letter to the future for PS5 provided by Scavengers Studio.
