SEASON is a quest to discover a new world one unknown yet familiar. It’s as much a ritual as the one you’re undertaking.In SEASON: A letter to the future, you play as a young woman from a secluded village exploring the world by bike for the first time, collecting memories before a cataclysm washes everything away. It’s happened before, it’ll likely happen again. In theory it should be the game equivalent of trying to pack as many personal effects into a suitcase as possible before escaping your burning home, but the reality here is an acceptance of the world’s fate. In a sense, the serene pace of Season is at odds with the urgency of the situation it presents, and this is definitely felt in how ambiguous the game can be. With ‘life or death’ removed from the equation, the narrative pathways on offer in Season are still meaningful, but in a very particular way. As such, Scavengers Studio must be applauded for pulling it off so regularly.įurther still, these moments can really matter in the context of how the story plays out. Yes, these moments are predetermined to some degree, but they aren’t obvious, and that requires a lot of trust in the player to feed their curiosity. Moments born from curiosity that then present you with a perfect thing to capture in documenting what the world is like now for those who will never see it themselves. A bit of exploration and poking about the area caused a delightfully strange event. I don’t want to go too deep into examples here as I’ve already noted how big a part discovery plays in Season, but one of my favorite moments early on was at a seemingly abandoned farmhouse where a herd of cows were milling about. Season doesn’t do wild and crazy, but it does do gently weird and surprising exceptionally well. It’s a world with similarities to our own, but subtle changes are abound thanks to the obvious layers of ruin preceding seasons have caused. The joy of discovery plays a big part in this journey. It’s genuinely one of the most pleasant and satisfying experiences I’ve had with the DualSense to date. The sound recorder comes through the controller’s speaker in a suitably discordant way and is backed by the subtle rumble of the haptics. The bike can be controlled by alternating the back shoulder buttons like pedals, with the adaptive triggers reacting to the bike’s speed accordingly. The DualSense offers a really tactile experience with these tools. As you travel from place to place, you’re able to take photos of things you see, record interesting sounds, pick up items that might help capture the essence of the world, and talk to those who remain.įurther Reading – Best PS5 Indie Games Ranked In 2023 – 32 Of The Best PS5 Indie Games To document the world, you have a scrapbook, a sound recorder, a camera, and a bike to go find all you need. A real sense of the trepidation, excitement, and wonder of what lies ahead.ĭuring this opening, Season introduces you to the tools that will make up much of your play time for the next 10 or so hours. By placing such importance on the act of leaving a life behind for something new, and making that such a final act, Scavengers Studio captures the mood for its adventure beautifully. Stranger still that it’s done in such a serene and heartfelt way as it is here. It’s strange to start a journey with a clear sense the protagonist is not going to see the people they grew up with ever again. This is a haunting, melancholic apocalypse that is driven by the desire to hold on to what we had in the face of destructive, seemingly unavoidable change. That’s the bare bones of what Season is about, but it is so much more. This person must leave their home high up in the mountains to travel across the broken planet on her bicycle, collecting snippets of the world as it is now as a reminder for the world as it will be. The current ‘season’ is coming to an end, and with that, a seemingly cataclysmic change to the world will arrive. Season is about a young woman going on a rite of passage journey with a difference. Season: A Letter To The Future PS5 Review An Emotional Rite Of Passage Story That Makes The Mundane Seem Magical As such, it makes this the perfect time for Scavengers Studio to release a game that is all about capturing the essence of its world. It’s never been easier to bottle our playtime for posterity and sharing. Be it streaming, podcasting, utilizing photo modes, or making videos. An increasingly large part of the fabric of modern gaming is in capturing moments and memories from our games. Season: A Letter To The Future PS5 Review.
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