SEASON: A letter to the future – a memory diary

Sometimes the world around us changes so slowly that we don’t even pay attention to the little things that distinguish one day from another. And sometimes, one not-so-good morning, the world turns upside down in a moment, and shatters into pieces, like window glass from a near-explosion of a missile. SEASON: A letter to the future is a game about a world that is about to change beyond recognition, and about futile attempts to understand why this is happening and to preserve the memory of what it once was.

How to leave home properly

This story is already three thousand years old. A young woman leaves her home to see the world beyond a small town hidden somewhere in the mountains. But everything is not so simple. She leaves in order to have time to preserve the memories of this world, which must soon disappear. A mysterious change of seasons must transform it into something else, and few people will remember what it once was. Why so? Who knows, maybe our heroine will be able to look behind the scenes and understand what it is, those seasons, and why their change affects the surrounding world so much.

Therefore, the girl takes only what is necessary – a tape recorder, a camera, a notebook, and pencils, gets on a bicycle and sets off to meet the unknown, whatever it may bring.

Tourist simulator

The heroine of SEASON: A letter to the future is serious. She clicks the camera shutter briskly, looking for interesting shots and pasting snapshots into her guidebook. She records the sounds of the forest, the lark’s song, the gurgling of the stream, and the jingling of church bells. She sketches the colossal ancient ruins and skeletons of harbor cranes abandoned last season. She collects other people’s postcards, notes, and letters. She decorates the pages of her notebook with patterns and sketches.

The girl must have time to remember, to imprint on the pages of the album this world, every corner of it that she can reach. Because the change of season is inevitable and it is about to happen.

One hundred years of solitude

SEASON: A letter to the future is a very melancholic, leisurely and calm game. And she, even despite the rather optimistic ending, leaves a feeling of incredible loneliness after the end. You are not able to prevent the arrival of the new season, not even able to help the people you meet on your way. Each of them, like the main character, is a very lonely person who has lost or abandoned someone whom she will most likely never see again.

I don’t know why, but SEASON reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, about how everything was decided long ago, and no matter what we do, we can’t prevent the impending hurricane. And in the game, there is something as melancholic and mystical as in Hayao Miyazaki’s cartoon The Wind Rises. Expectation and fear of change.

Journey to a new world

It is easiest to describe SEASON: A letter to the future as a walking and cycling simulator. You have to carefully study all the locations, looking for graffiti or an old poster hidden somewhere on the back wall, which can explain what happened in this or that location a few days before the girl’s arrival, or even in the last season. And maybe… even talk about what will happen tomorrow.

Most of the game is almost linear, but you can explore a very large location in the middle in whatever order suits you. The valley awaiting the inevitable flood is another analogy of the world that is to be washed away by the coming of the new season.

To the end

SEASON: A letter to the future is an interactive story and a kind of philosophical parable. At the same time, everyone will be able to find something for themselves in the game. Something about not holding on to the past, living in yesterday, and being afraid of change. That any end is just a new beginning. Or on the contrary, we should not forget what is left behind, and that memory is what makes us human.

And this is a game about farewell. To relatives, to the dead, to memories, to the city that was dear to you, to the house where you grew up, to friends, to the passing season. All that remains are the memories in the pages of an old album, carefully pasted photos, and words written in calligraphic handwriting, which might make someone else leave their home and go explore the world. Because one day it may disappear. Unfortunately, we know how it happens.