Season, a new adventure game for PlayStation 5 and PC, impressed viewers at The Game Awards 2020 with its beautiful, Studio Ghibli-like graphical style. Fans of unique indie games will likely want to learn everything there is to know about this upcoming PS5 title, so here are all the details so far about Season's gameplay, story, and release date.
Along with the usual awards, this year's The Game Awards played host to several surprise game announcements, including the return of the Mass Effect franchise. With only a few reveals each, PlayStation and Xbox took a back seat to third-party publishers like EA, but that doesn't mean their announcements didn't make a big impact. Microsoft's Perfect Dark revival likely excited fans of the long-dormant series, and though most of its attention was on the multi-award-winning The Last of Us Part 2, PlayStation treated fans to Season's reveal.
The Season announcement trailer showed off a colorful, detailed world full of nature. Developed by Canadian indie studio Scavengers, which previously created battle royale game Darwin Project, Season's calm atmosphere and beautiful visuals promise a PlayStation console-exclusive akin to thatgamecompany's 2012 classic, Journey.
PS5's Season Game - Release Date
As implied by its trailer's release via Sony, Season will be exclusive to PlayStation 5 on consoles, but it will also be coming to PC via Steam. Scavengers lists the game's platforms as PC and simply "PlayStation," however, so it's possible the game will also come to PS4. There is no set release date for Season, and Scavengers has not announced even a planned release year. Although the studio says it has been working on the game for years, Season still appears to be quite a ways from its release, so - especially given the challenges COVID-19 has put on game studios - it's likely it won't come out until at least the later half of 2021.
PS5's Season Game - Story
Luckily, Scavengers has revealed some details already about Season's story. Set in "a surreal version of the mid-20th century, where thousands of years have passed without any progress," Season has a deeply melancholic premise: Something big is about to change the world - a "collapse" that will "wash away" its cultures, apparently foreshadowed by a similar one many years in the past. There's nothing anyone can do to stop this apocalypse, but, to at least prevent the present from being forgotten, a young woman from a secluded community sets out on a bicycle-bound journey to document the world around her, find out what caused the last collapse, and record the last moments of the world's cultures.
PS5's Season Game - Gameplay
Practically, this means Season's gameplay will involve third-person biking around the world, talking to its inhabitants, and recording everything, be it through drawing, audio capture, artifact collecting, or photography. Needless to say, Season will likely be more about discovery and taking in the world than any kind of adrenaline-pumping, moment-to-moment events, but such an interesting world will probably have some surprises waiting unexpectedly around a bend in the road.
Season will come to PC and PlayStation 5 on an unspecified date.