SEASON: A letter to the future Reviews
Season: A Letter to the Future is the latest example of an indie adventure about exploration and meddling, able to leave you totally in love with the approach to the themes explored here. It is a pity that the technical component is having several problems and lacks refinement to elements such as the camera and controls. As food for the soul, Season: A Letter to the Future is an intriguing relaxed, a good break from the mega-blockbusters that occupy most of our time, but as a game, they should have gone further to create a more striking memory.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
SEASON: A Letter to the Future offers a peaceful and uncomplicated experience. The game only asks us to take some time for ourselves and enjoy the present moment. The scenery and sounds are beautiful. But as soon as we look closer, we notice the shortcomings of the game. The controls are far from perfect. The dialogues rarely make sense. And some might find the game a bit repetitive on what we have to accomplish. The game won't be remembered, but it might allow many to take a break from their tumultuous lives. And this is a more than positive point.
Review in French | Read full review
SEASON: A letter to the future is just a beautiful game. It’s a game that comes highly recommended to anyone who enjoys narrative games with a strong focus on exploration. A narrative-oriented exploration game where it’s just you, the desolate world, and your ever-present, trusty bicycle.
As a tranquil Indie experience, SEASON certainly isn’t bad but it's not a particularly good game either. It does have some stand-out moments and the general worldbuilding is pretty good but everything else around that is woefully substandard. Traversing the world on your bike is surprisingly dull (don’t expect to fall off your bike or find any physics applied to this), while both the animation and general mechanics at play here leave a lot to be desired. SEASON's simplistic design is both its biggest selling point and its Achille's heel.
Giving players the freedom to capture anything sounds liberating, but its lack of structure makes it all a hollow endeavor, a feeling that’s only made even more extreme during its general, unsatisfying ending.
Every system in Season seems to just be encapsulated by highs and lows. There will be something I'm really enjoying like the act of cycling, but then simultaneously an annoyance or disruption will creep in and spoil it. That is not to say there is nothing to enjoy within Season - quite the contrary, with the form of a great game clearly here. Aspects like the haptic feedback and active preservation excel within the game, but there is far too much clasping on the brakes to get the rhythm going, even in such a short game.
Leaving your hometown can be a difficult and scary decision. Fear of the unknown terrain, people, and challenges can force a hefty emotional toll. Layer this with premonitions of the end of the world as you know it, and it almost sounds too insurmountable. SEASON: A letter to the future, beautifully encapsulates this sense of doom while also pushing the player to see the beauty when closing a chapter in someone’s story.