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Season: A Letter To The Future is more an experience than a game, as you walk around a landscape as if it’s been abandoned like in The Last Of Us, even though it’s not far from civilisation.
In the premise, as young woman called Estelle, you live with your mother, and it’s a period where your father has since died, and you’re making your way out into the world for the first time. However, you have to suspend some disbelief, since even though the outside world is set after a war of which you have no knowledge, your character feels a bit too green around the gills, since she comes across things like a tractor, saying, “I presume it was used for this purpose” (and then describing what a tractor would be used for), which comes across as odd, since it’s not as if Estelle was born yesterday, or just stepped off a spaceship from Mars.
On the plus side, Season: A Letter To The Future makes you think about those who have passed on, same as with 2021’s Before Your Eyes and Of Bird And Cage, and it’s interesting to see programmers create titles which go into such introspective detail about life. It’s such a fresh thing to see when so many game studios are only focused on Assassins Call Of Fortnite Season 29, etc.
However, for a game that can last anything from 6-12 hours, do try and stay with it for the long haul, despite some of its shortcomings. It’s fun at first – take a picture of this, an audio recording of that, so as to preserve the moment (which is what the game is about), but it does start to drag in scenes such as visiting a cow farm, and to do everything, you need to go up to every single one of the ten cows and pat them all, so you can get to know their names.
Season: A Letter To The Future is also a very ambitious game, and doesn’t always work. For example, I kept crashing into everything on a regular basis on the bike you acquire early on, before learning to get the hang of it. I realised if you point the left stick in the direction you want to go, then that is fine. However, there were times when I got stuck against a wall for a while, like Austin Powers trying to do a three-point turn in a buggy. In other cases, you can be zooming along on two wheels, then hit a rock or the side of a wall, and you stop dead in your tracks whilst remaining upright.
At other times, it’s glitchy in that as you approach the end of a cliff, you and your bike end up as if you can happily walk about partially on air, like when I got stuck in Assassins Creed Unity before I got tired of that broken mess.
Similarly, another time while cycling, I was happily gliding along, then came to an abrupt stop. When I was following Kochi on his tour of the place, during one of the side missions, and my front wheel stuck fast, I rose up from the rear, and it looked like I was trying to out-‘Tony Hawk’ Tony Hawk!
But I know this is an indie title compared to a AAA-title big-budget release, so I’ll forgive transgressions like that. I just wish they could find a way to overcome them.
What I really wish they did allow – and could have done, is the ability to replay previous checkpoints as I go. I realised that you need to try and take as many pictures of as many things as possible, record sound and so on, so you just don’t miss anything, and capture as many memories as possible. So, when I finished a section and later realised I’d missed something (e.g. by seeing a video online), I so wanted it to be possible. It’s not. The game autosaves with no option to return back through the game.
Similarly, one of my game 4K capture sessions with Elgato 4K60 Pro Mk2 went all screwy and while I also do a backup recording in 1080p with OBS, there was a weird glitch I’ve never come across before where the audio was also playing up. This happened for early sections of my traverse through the Tieng Valley for parts 6-9 of the gameplay online.
Why on Earth can’t we just go back to previous saves? THAT is bloody annoying.
However, for what you can do in Season: A Letter To The Future, there are so many things you can see and do in this game. I know I will have missed some, but I tried to cover as many as possible, even though as the image on this review shows, I did kinda make 100% progress, as you’ll see above.
Note that at the time of posting this review, the first six parts of my gameplay are online. I’ll release each new one daily, and there will be a total of 19 videos.
Overall: 7.5/10
Thanks to our friends at Scavengers Studio for the review code for this game.
Season: A Letter To The Future is out now on the respective online stores for PS4, PS5, Epic Games and Steam.
You can also pre-order the Original Soundtrack MP3, ahead of its release on May 5th.
Important info:
- Developer: Scavengers Studio
- Publisher: Scavengers Studio
- Players: single-player
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.