Seasons After Fall has been out for some time on the PC and is only recently made its way over to the consoles. Being woken up by a soft female voice, you'll be taking control of "the seed" as it possesses a nearby fox in order to traverse the lengths and depths of the forest in order to perform the ritual of the seasons.
Visually Seasons After Fall is stunning to look at with its soft colors that are most vibrant for Fall (my favorite of the four in real life) and Winter. Spring isn't bad with it's April Showers theme though I found Summer to be the weakest of the set as it felt like brighter, yet muted, Spring. What struck me the most visually is that aside from the four guardians, one for each season, and several fireflies and cicadas, that's it. You're alone in this forest as you go about your task and it was one of the most refreshing platforming experiences that I've had in a long time.
The fox's journey is one of puzzle solving. There's no combat. There's no fast paced platforms falling out from under your feet, there's no urgency in order to traverse these locations, there's just time to figure it all out and get it right. Some of these puzzles are hard as hell but with nothing on the clock, you're free to look for the clues that are lying about somewhere even if they don't look like they are one. Take no visual cues for granted.
Foxes are known for being Sly and I'm not talking about Cooper. So it's with this that I found strange that while deception constantly seemed to be at the forefront at the adventure, it wasn't the fox being deceptive but deceived. This theme spans from the overall feel of the adventure to the interactions with the few that actually speak to you. There's always a feeling of something not being said yet you go along with it anyways.
The first major point of these is the actual length of Seasons After Fall. Controls are basic. You can run, you can jump, you can change the seasons. So with only these abilities ever in your repertoire it felt like things were coming to an end after only a few hours as, for all intents and purposes, it felt like the adventure wrapping up. This was just the beginning and the first of the deceptions as there are three major segments and a good ten or so hours to be had completing it all.
I thoroughly enjoyed Seasons After Fall. It's a well build adventure from start to finish. On a whole the adventure may take a sitting or two, depending on the lengths of the sittings, but it took me about ten hours on a rainy weekend to go through and complete it at about 100% if you check the game file and basically missing two trophies for a platinum if you go by the PSN. Blowing all the flowers? That's easy. Finding a particular bird? In a forest with no animals you think it would be easy…
Game Information
PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Swing Swing Submarine
Publisher(s):
Focus Home Interactive
Genre(s):
Platformer
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Microsoft Xbox One
PC
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Pierre-Yves
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