Seasons after Fall (2016)

This title is a charming puzzle-platformer that stands out for its hand-painted, storybook-like visuals. The world feels alive, with seasonal changes that directly affect the environment, giving puzzles a satisfying depth without overwhelming the player. The game’s soundtrack and ambient sounds enhance its fairy-tale atmosphere, making exploration a calm, immersive experience.

One of it's standouts is switching between the four seasons to solve environmental puzzles is intuitive and often clever, keeping gameplay engaging. However, the game is relatively short, typically lasting 4~6 hours, and some puzzles involve repetitive backtracking. Particularly speaking I don't really mind this since this is really what this game is trying to do, being a short and beautiful puzzle platformer, with unique and alternative narrative elements, and it shines when delivering all this.

But there are some drawbacks, it can be unclear where to go next, which amounts to the puzzle complexity. Instead, it should have a clear sing-posting of what to do next, in order for the player to focus solely in the platforming and puzzle-solving. Overall, this game is best enjoyed by people who appreciate beautiful visuals, relaxing exploration, and gentle puzzles rather than challenging or lengthy gameplay. It’s a peaceful, atmospheric experience that emphasizes mood and discovery over complexity.

Seasons After Fall is a wonderful puzzle-platform game, in which you have to manipulate the four seasons on your advantage, so you can continue your journey through the stages of the game and solve some riddles, to rescue the spirits of the seasons. Each season comes with different micro-phenomena (for example, winter makes the water ice, or in fall grow mushrooms) and the landscape amazingly changes. The graphics are magnificent, the music unique and the whole atmosphere makes you believe you've entered the pages of a well-painted storybook. Its artwork easily reminds you Ori And The Blind Forest, but the main difference is the difficulty level. Seasons After Fall is a simple puzzle game and aims more at the player to fall into the magic of the beautiful scenery and learn to manipulate the enviroment effectively, than to solve difficult riddles.

Although i really enjoyed Seasons After Fall, i felt that the story wasn't enough strong and deep to make me bond with the characters and the whole experience, like Ori did. Of course that's kind of subjective and can't prevent me from highly recommending it to players who love this kind of games.