SEASON: A letter to the future Reviews
A successful attempt to explore how memory works – in the form of a game
Review in Russian | Read full review
SEASON: A letter to the future is like a vertical slice of an entire experience. It feels like a part of something bigger and leaves you with plenty of questions, and also wanting more. It is just like life in the sense that it does not give you what you want, and it is up to you to figure out what is going on. The story does a great job creating an immersive atmosphere, but it does not really give a sense of fulfillment. The lack of a proper conclusion leaves things wide open.
Season: A Letter to the Future is an experience committed to the art of environmental storytelling. Although how much you connect with the world will be determined by your enjoyment of slow-paced adventures with minimal gameplay and the way you interpret the narrative.
Contemplative and profound, SEASON: A letter to the future is a work of art that invites you to discover and record an era that will soon vanish in transition to an unknown world. Traversing the open world with your camera and notebook should appeal to those who want a beautiful, immersive experience of aesthetic creation and philosophical storytelling.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
I feel like calling SEASON "the Death Stranding of indie games". SEASON is a very meaningful game where you can deeply feel that loneliness, music, sounds and the feeling of "keeping memories alive".
Review in Turkish | Read full review
SEASON: A letter to the future is an intriguing slow-paced exploration game that actually makes scrapbooking fun by drawing you into its attractive world as you make record of every sight, sound, and touch before it's all washed away.
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.
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.
Season is an extremely chill game about leaving home for the first time, touring the world on a bike, and recording the wonders you find along the way. Also, the world might be ending, but no one is letting that ruin their day. While it’s filled with scenes of beauty, Season’s awkward pace and muddled message leave it feeling a little undercooked.
Through creative world-building and earnest emotion, SEASON makes you appreciate the marvelous sights and sounds amidst a crumbling world.
Rewarding exploration, enjoyable bike traversal and a gorgeous world make Season: A letter to the future a journey worth embarking on.
Hinting at a grand and epic adventure, SEASON: A letter to the future instead presents a personal, vertical slice of a transient world. Through its small-scale stories and simple gameplay, it exists as a reflective meditation on liminality that encourages patience and presence. It weaves environmental storytelling and player choice into a compelling emotional journey. While it may occasionally stray into an overly-earnest territory and doesn't quite nail its pacing, SEASON: A letter to the future is a special, honest experience and a worthy addition to any narrative adventure lover's library.
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.
Season is a reminder that memories of the past are all we’re left with, and it staples the importance of being able to carry over that knowledge into future generations. Because otherwise, we’re left with a culture that is doomed to repeat the same mistakes and won’t have the skills to work past it.
SEASON: A Letter To The Future has a real touch of brilliance around it, showcasing something truly unique with a world that players will be desperate to rediscover, and hopefully there will be an opportunity to do so. A game that will last long in the memory, even if it's something that will be lost to its own characters.
Once you do find the paths you need to take, the story is over before it ever got going. The game's opening makes it feel like your character is embarking on a quest, but that journey ends after one stop. In that way, Season is structured like spring. You barely realize it's here before it's already gone.
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.
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.
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