A letter to the future, the most beautiful postcard collection of 2023

Trips into the unknown are always a pleasure that I want to immerse myself in. Discover, explore and surprise myself with the landscape, with those who cross the path and the stories you hear with each step. Scavengers Studio has taken this idea to give shape to SEASON: A letter to the futurea beautiful and unusual route in which we decide tomorrow.

Hiking between postcards

Every work must show its main virtues before its release and with SEASON: A letter to the future We have the classics that enter through the eyes. Beautiful landscapes, with great variety, passing through villas reminiscent of a town lost in the middle of Italy, lagoons in which the remains of industry crumble and valleys that seem to have no end. Some bucolic prints that any store would like to sell as postcards.

However, everything is watered by a constant question throughout the game and it is:what the hell is going on? Why are there huge cranes fallen? Is it normal to find so many remains of civilization, but absolutely no one appears before us? We will gradually discover the context of the title and at first it is perfectly normal to feel confused.

Without a name being revealed, we control a young woman who leaves her village, located above the clouds, in order to explore the world to collect memories before a cataclysm ends everything. Somehow, there will be a change of season that will make everyone lose their memory, but our duty is to collect as many experiences as possible.

The main vehicle to get around will be a bicycle, as old as it is effective. It is the means of transport that does not fail us and that is a delight to feel thanks to the adaptive triggers, causing the resistance to pedal the bicycle to vary according to your speed and the inclination of the road. Lots of descents, steep climbs and flat sections of stone, cobblestones, grass and asphalt everywhere.

However, in confined spaces or when it is necessary to make a sharp turn, the angle offered by the bicycle is not always the best. One detail to keep in mind is that we can move away from it to walk without problems, but we must pause the game and select the option for the bike to return to our hands. A button assigned to that task would be much easier.

There is no newspaper like it

The sentence in the headline is completely true. Documenting, photographing and recording are three verbs that we will constantly execute. Our protagonist has the duty to discover, to know what lies beyond and that will be reflected in the notebook that we carry with us. Here is the true protagonist of the story, because it reflects all the experiences we have.

A recorder and a camera are our main work tools, in addition to an unusual ability to draw. Throughout the pages, spaces are generated to capture what seems most relevant to us in each of the places we visit. The Tieng Valley has a sanctuary, meadows and forests in which hardly any light passes through their leaves and it is the setting where we will spend the most time during the four hours of departure.

A semi open world in which we have total freedom to decide where to go -although previously we traveled linear sections- and be clear about what deserves to be part of the notebook. Does a simple tree catch our attention? Photo to the edge The sound of water running through a stream? Recording that raised you. Not only that, but we will listen to the internal reflections of the girl on everything that we are documenting.

The key moment comes when we decide what we want to be inside the notebook. We can have innumerable prints, phrases in all possible senses, exquisite drawings and even decorative stickers. There is no punctuation for placing them correctly or incorrectly, it is not even necessary that we fill in the entire notebook. What’s more, there are situations in which we are given the option of simply enjoying the moment and keeping it as our own memory that will not be recorded anywhere else beyond our mind.

The world of SEASON: A letter to the future it is one that deserves to be discovered little by little and that has more layers than it appears. Own rules that we must learn, but that we cannot change because they are inevitable and the most important thing is to be clear about what is the best thing that we want to preserve against the consequences. Yes, there are characters that we will meet along the way and all of them are mired in existential crises or more than reasonable doubts.

What to leave behind, live in the moment or learn that tomorrow can always be a better day. Once again, the adventure encourages replayability, since we can approach the answers from various perspectives, although we will only find the same and inescapable ending.

iGamesNews’s opinion

Just as we praise FPS and hack & slash games for getting our heart rate going with frenetic combat, keep in mind that SEASON: A letter to the future takes us down to a point of extreme relaxation. You can’t launch into a fight with Dante without knowing that he’s playing a good cane and it’s nonsense to get on the bike without being clear that the narrative weight is fundamental.

And that is the main handicap of the title. Scavengers Studio trusts everything to the trick of the story and it is one of those that need the player to do their part. If you don’t click with what’s happening on the screen, you’ll be enjoying beautiful scenery without really caring what you’re doing there. The reward is found at the end, with the revelation of what exactly the notebook is for and the purpose of the trip.

The absence of emotional involvement does not prevent us from having before our eyes one of the most precious games of 2023. A distinctive touch that makes everything we see look like something out of a comic, with original designs, a unique world and a soundtrack whose presence is remote, but which is felt.