As I’ve said many times before, I love narrative games. So as soon as I saw the initial trailer for “Season,” I knew that it’d be exactly up my alley, and it proved to be one of my ten favorite games from 2023. Unfortunately, very few people agreed with me.

Over at Steam, the game has a “very positive” review average, but a mere 1,600 people have bothered to leave their thoughts. It has a rock-solid 4.4/5 score on PlayStation too, but that’s from fewer than 600 player ratings. It’s deeply sad to see such a delightful game end up with so few people in its corner.

So even though it’s been years since the game hit virtual shelves, I’m taking up a moment of your day to explain exactly why “Season: A Letter To The Future” is worth playing. Hopefully, you’ll give it the chance it deserves.

Our protagonist, Estelle, sets out from her small town on a bike. There’s some sort of imminent climate catastrophe that will wipe out the world as she knows it, and she’s tasked with recording sound and images of the surrounding areas while everyone scrambles to evacuate.

It starts out just as you’d expect. You’re biking around a mostly empty world, and you’re documenting landscapes, abandoned architecture, and even some farm animals. There’s a peaceful aspect of recording the world on the brink of apocalypse, and that resonates heavily for me.

I grew up in a rural area where you could walk for hours and maybe see two or three people total. Exploring the world by yourself is unlike anything else, and this game recreates that experience beautifully. Capturing a gorgeous photo of a specific place that perhaps nobody else has ever seen before feels incredible. That moment is stored forever.

However, you’re not the only one at the end of the world.

Unlike many walking sims, there are actual people wandering around, and they play a major role in your experience documenting the world as it currently is for whatever or whoever comes next.

Not only do these people serve as steps on a quest chain to entertain you, but they help flesh out the world in such a way that you start to legitimately grieve its upcoming demise. Their lives are being turned upside down, and it feels all too familiar.

Exploring an environment by yourself is pleasant, no doubt, but chatting with people who are leaving their homes behind, or perhaps letting the cows enjoy their favorite radio station before the end comes, gives everything you do substantially more weight.

And as the game wraps up, we’re left with hope for a new beginning, but that’s cold comfort in the face of everything we’ve lost. We must remember what came before.

Unfortunately, all of this praise needs to be tempered with a brutal reality. Back in 2021, there were reports of abusive behavior at the studio. And not long after the game launched, a significant portion of the team was let go at Scavengers Studio.

Even when you’re a relatively small studio, the human cost of making something special can be much, much too high. I feel very conflicted knowing about the real-world suffering adjacent to this game, but I’d be lying if I said the finished piece didn’t mean the world to me.

“Season: A Letter To The Future” is available now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows.

Image Credit: “Season: A Letter To The Future,” Scavengers Studio