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In upcoming game ‘Season’, you’re field recording the apocalypse

Armed with a microphone and a bicycle, set out on a melancholic journey to capture the world’s last moments of peace in upcoming game Season.

The third-person, minimalist styled game Season is reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s iconic films. A far cry from a saturated market of action-packed shooters, survival games, and other fighters, this PC/PlayStation game is set to take players on a melancholic trip of exploration, mixed with photography and field recording.

Balancing an aura of warmth and bittersweet nostalgia, Canadian based Scavengers Studio focuses on “encountering local people” and biking through a world “inspired by the early Japanese woodblock print artists”. Rather than focusing on every little detail, Season chooses to admire the beauty of simplicity and from what we can tell, it does a wonderful job already.

Season field recording game
Image: Scavengers Studio

Unlike the hundreds of world-saving RPGs you can find pretty much anywhere, the player’s aim in Season isn’t to save everyone. It’s to record them.

Tasked with creating “a time capsule” and deciding “what would capture the spirit” of this world, you can’t help but think of the globe’s current situation. With the pandemic still kicking, being reminded to slow down and appreciate our surroundings is a powerful message. A sorely needed one too.

In the face of “an uncertain future”, nobody can deny how daunting Season’s recording task is, but its focus on atmosphere is its clear strength already. Even in its trailer we can feel the peaceful tone the developers have created, mixed with an undeniable sense of nostalgia for a “golden age” that has yet to become a “faded memory”.

Season’s world-ending event isn’t revealed to us yet and maybe it won’t be, even after its release sometime in 2021. What started the apocalypse doesn’t matter here, it’s the player’s choices that do. Those choices aren’t made by a dialogue wheel, but through a camera and a microphone instead.

So, what would you record?

 

Season is coming to PC and PlayStation later in 2021.