SEASON: A letter to the future

BEAUTIFUL narrative game both visually and story-wise. I love the flat local colors paired with the glowing ambient light - they make for such charming, cinematic cutscenes that are pushed further by the cinemascope aspect ratio. My only gripe is that I wish it were longer, especially since the game refers to multiple regions but only explores a couple of them.

Great game but laggy and frame rate drops on steam deck

It's a work of art!

The story, world, characters, and sounds are beautiful and interesting. The writing is excellent. I like the decisions I get to make and the things I get to do. The journal stamps are cute, and I love that I can edit journal pages. It is nice that the game categorizes your photos and sounds for you. My favorite part of the game is interacting with the cows. I wish I did not have to take specific photos in order to complete certain pages. Having to explore Tieng Valley in one "day" makes me feel rushed, so I wish there was some dialogue that told me to take my time. When taking photos, I have never understood how changing the focus improved the images at all, but maybe I'm just dumb. I might also like a general "landscape" page and "animals" page so I could add more photos of cows :)

A beautiful story with beautiful visuals

This was a beautiful game. A little short, But it was BEAUTIFUL. It's a shame it ended so soon, I wish it was more expansive so we could learn more about the world, it's past, and it's people. I loved the scrap-booking/journaling/photography elements. Looking forward to more games and stories from this developer! I got this game on sale, and for it's shortness, I think I'm happy about that. There's virtually no replayability for me, unless you want to redo some choices.

Also, I hope the cows got out.

There's a lot of heart in this one, lots of love put into the compositions around the world and the writing. Loooooove the journal mechanic, genuinely one of my favorite parts of the game. At times the game comes off very profound, and others a bit under-baked, but at all times it's easy to get swept up in the really unique world building. There's a lot to discover, document, and explore for the naturally curious.

All that being said, there are a few issues I have with the work. The bicycle really does control awful, even with a controller. At times I can feel the momentum they were going for, but most of the time I am taking wide turns into a rock that breaks the camera. There are multiple basic gameplay, animation, and visual bugs you'll come across as you play. Some of the voice acting is awkward, and I personally don't vibe with a few art style choices - particularly the more abstract people designs, certain font choices, and the speech bubble presentation. Nothing is game breaking, but it is all stuff that breaks immersion in a otherwise very immersive experience.

If you like the idea of just exploring and taking photos you'll probably enjoy it well enough, but if that's not appealing, then you might wanna skip this one. I am overall a bit sad to see the studio downsize after this title, this is a really unique game with a lot of heart, and I think it would've been nice to see more come from them.

Take your time, enjoy the beauty of it and bask in the story

Beautiful and extremely well-written game! so many great lines that will stick with me for a while... a must play for anyone who enjoys journaling or scrapbooking

I don't have anything interesting to say exept I played this on the steam deck and I encountered no glitches or problems, and it ran very well overall though sometimes the frames would drop a little bit for a few seconds.

Super cool game! I enjoyed every little bit it had to offer.

A rather melancholy game with a strange charm. I am sad it was so short. But it was quite beautiful and enjoyable

An underrated cozy game about preserving memories in between two eras. I'm not much for writing game reviews, but I felt compelled to write about this one.

The gameplay is simple: you walk, run and/or ride around different areas while using your camera, recorder and notebook to capture "memories". Your task is to compile your findings into set journal entries, which the game gives you freedom to arrange in any way you like. There IS an overall plot with a set ending, but this game is more about the journey and not the destination.

Note that this game was developed by a new studio, so expect it to have slightly less polish than your top of the mill indie game. That said, the art direction is impressive for their first game and more than makes up for the little kinks in performance. The environment is inviting, the character designs are zany, and there's some solid worldbuilding here in spite of the game's very short length. But it is a complete game.

With all that said, the game is very short relative to the original price tag. I strongly recommend picking it up during a sale if it at all interests you.

There is a section of the game that feels as though it might have a time limit. It does not, so take your time with it - you'll be able to do everything you want to.

Um jogo sobre passado, presente e futuro.
Sobre lembranças, vida e incertezas.
Sobre perdas, escolhas e esperança.

very good very niceee

A beautiful game with an amazing visual and an even better story. 10/10 would recommend.

This is a beautifully made slow game. You travel on your bike through beautiful and interesting landscapes and collect memories, pictures, things. Great voice acting, intriguing story, very relaxed vibe. This has to be your cup of tea and I think you also need to be in the mood for this. But when you are, this is very well made. I thoroughly enjoyed it, which I would not have expected.

This game is fantastic! Loved every minute of it. The visuals are stunning and the gameplay is fun. I wish it was at least triple the length so i could play more!

What a game... A once in a lifetime experience for sure. The themes presented and the emotional weight of it all just moved me in ways I didn't expect. I came to this game expecting a meditative and relaxing experience but it gave me so much more than that and inspired me to look at my surroundings from different angles while also giving me a lot more stuff to think and reminisce about. Really recommend giving this a shot. Especially if you don't have much experience "playing" games. This is an experience anyone should see through at least once in my humble opinion!

*dies* this game is so BEAUTIFUL!

i think this is an incredible game that is really beautiful and effective at what it's trying to make you feel, to the point where it just made me so upset i had to quit, for a time where i'm doing better lol

A stunning and beautiful game about memory and moving on.

My only real complaint is that while it is visually/artistically beautiful, it doesn't look good enough to justify its performance, the game is a unoptimized and on the Steam Deck, frequently dips to the 20s.

Lovely

The visuals are nice and are probably the best aspect of the game. The controls are a bit clunky and the journaling mechanic didn't do much for me. The voice acting is also pretty bad -- very monotonous. The story showed promise early but it was a bit pretentious and I lost interest in the game before I progressed through it too much.

What a beautiful game with breathtaking art and an emotional story. One of those games I wish I could forget just to play it all over again.

A beautifully crafted and poignant meditation on the nature of memory, connection, and impermanence. Peaceful and laid back, poetic and deeply human; the gameplay itself encourages us to slow down, to be curious, to savor the moment. Season hopes we will find the balance between preserving the past, creating a meaningful future, and simply experiencing the life in front of us moment to moment. This game was a piece of art and I hope to see more like it.

Such a treat to play this game, i'm notorious for starting and not finishing a game but this one i just couldn't stop playing. What a beautiful overall message and the art was something that came out of my inner thoughts of what i imagined a game that i would draw up to be.

What a beautiful game, it kept me engrossed that I wanted to explore as much as I could to unlock as much as I could. The story, while short, was great.

This game is so uniquely different from everything else that it's hard to describe accurately. I really enjoyed just riding around, not knowing where I was going till I got there, and just collecting bits of stories and knowledge not knowing who it was even for. It's a good game to enjoy being lost in.

Absolutely beautiful game - short and sweet, but punchy all the way through

I absolutely loved this game. Beautiful art, very relaxing and calming journey. The story itself not only interesting, but quite unique for my taste. Highly recommend!

Great game, but I feel like it ended prematurely. It had the potential to have at least two or three more chapters and I felt disappointed when it was already over. I was just getting warmed up and ready to explore more of this curious world by the time the credits started rolling. There are still some questions left unanswered that I would've liked to be able to find out about as I go around more areas before the season ended. I love the world building, but it has left me dissatisfied and wanting more. It really feels incomplete at this point and the end felt a bit rushed.

I rarely write reviews, but I felt compelled to leave one considering how much I enjoyed this game. SEASON is beautiful, so much so that I wish I was a better writer to be able to really convey what made it so special. The whole game is incredibly evocative, like poetry in motion. Even the mechanics, like recording sounds being part of your journey adds so much to the experience, you find yourself listening so intently to everything around you, the wind, the insects, the water. Being attentive to detail is well rewarded, and everything paints a bigger and more lived in picture of the world.

Definitely a special game to me, one I will remember and recommend to anyone and everyone.

Cute game, 10/10 adorable, made me feels things. Some of the quotes and dialogue will probably stay with me forever.

I really enjoyed this game!

A game that made me feel things, an enjoyment in exploring a different world, meeting all the characters, unfolding stories and histories. Just wonderful!

THIS GAME IS WAY TO GOOOOOOD

This game is incredible PLEASE give me more content I'm begging

short but unique story. Disappointed that I did not see any impact with my choices, however, it was still good

no game has hit my comfy story telling bone since this game. I played it so long ago and still think about it. The scrap booking was so well done and i loved spending some time making beautiful pages. The story was beautiful, the art was beautiful, the message was beautiful, I love this game.

i pray to void to make me forget this game so i can experience playing it for the first time again

I have not even played 1% of the game and somehow never been so excited before to play a game.

It looks gorgeous, feels very comfortable, is incredibly immersive and.. the scenery.. if I had to lose a few limbs to experience the beauty of such a world.. I would happily.

Really wanted to play this bought it for steam deck and unfortunantly its doesn't run well at all 20-25fps

Though my preferred gaming experience is steeped in depth and darkness, I do seek cozy games that allow a more relaxed mode of immersion. SEASON offers both depth and darkness, though the darkness offered is nostalgic and melancholic in nature. Its scenarios and the characters you encounter draw you deep into the heart, and the art beautifully elevates your journey. While this is a game wherein you use a camera for documentation, I found myself so present in the moment that I barely took a screenshot. Those like myself who tire of the overly cutesy cozy game aesthetic will relish that this feels quite mature. You won’t regret the money spent on this.

A very beautiful and underrated game, I loved taking the time to take photos of the surroundings and the fact that you get to do some scrap booking as well with the photos. Also loved the diversity of the characters and their culture. Definitely a game that's worth buying, its a wonderful experience.

i cried

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.

A really soothing game.
You get to take photos and record sounds of a season ending and put it all into a customisable journal. So satisfying.