While I don’t regularly play 2D puzzle-platform games, Swing Swing Submarine’s Seasons after fall has to be one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played this year. On the surface, the game’s premise of controlling a fox to gather the power of the seasons and complete various tasks sounds simple, but there is, in fact, a lot of depth to the game especially in the main mechanic, the ability to alter the seasons.

The ability to change seasons allows you to manipulate the environment around you. For example, during the game, I had to use a geyser to reach a new location, but since it was fall, I couldn’t use it, but once I changed the season to winter the geyser froze and became a usable platform. As you progress through the story and gain all four seasons the puzzles become a lot more difficult and require a surprisingly large amount of thinking, I believe there was a puzzle that took me about thirty minutes to complete.

For those wondering about the story, Seasons after fall has a strong and compelling narrative, something I honestly wasn’t expecting. The story involves you playing the role of a special seed and controlling a fox to explore the forest, talking to each of the seasonal guardians, and gaining the power of the seasons in an effort to begin the Ritual of the seasons. Nevertheless, the game’s story goes beyond simply fetching seasons and solving puzzles. The story shows how you shouldn’t let fear control you and how even the forest has its own circle of life as even seeds must venture from their sanctuary and find a place to grow. As you reach the half waypoint of the game, the story has a rather emotional spike, while the creation of the emotional moment was obvious to see, it didn’t make watching it happen any less sad.

Before talking about the game’s issues, I want to briefly talk about the game’s main mechanic and puzzles again. As I mentioned earlier the puzzle solving and environment manipulation is done by changing to the correct season, but while changing seasons is important another important mechanic is barking. Barking is a mechanic that is mostly used early in the game as you have to bark at a seasonal spirit to invoke a season you haven’t acquired yet along with certain objects, for example, to get a vine to unravel you have to set the season to summer and also bark at it.

Now, let’s talk about the issues. In all honesty, there is no major issue with Seasons after fall, and the issue I’m about to bring up is a personal gripe, as the most frustrating issue, was the backtracking. Since Seasons after fall has no map or mini-map it is very easy to get lost and I found a lot of my time was spent trying to find the way back to the hub area known as the sanctuary. While there are some portals that can bring you back to the sanctuary you will most likely get lost looking for those as well.

Now before reaching my conclusion I want to talk about the graphics and audio. Graphically, Seasons after fall is a masterpiece as the game looks like an interactive painting as you can see what looks like paint strokes on trees and other objects. In terms of audio, the soundtrack is amazing as every song played works with what’s happening on screen. In terms of voice acting, I felt each voice suited each character including the very childlike voice of the narrator.

Conclusion

Seasons after fall is an incredibly fun and at times challenging 2D puzzle-platformer. But what makes Seasons after fall a truly memorable experience is the season manipulation and amazing soundtrack.

Score: 10/10

Pros:

Pros	Cons
+ Season manipulation	– Backtracking can be annoying
+ Story
+ Challenging puzzles
+ Lovely art style
+ Amazing soundtrack

Developer	Publisher	Genre	Rating	Platform	Release date
Swing Swing Submarine	Focus Home Interactive	platformer	N/A	PC	September 2, 2016

*A review code was provided by the game’s publisher.*

For more information on Seasons after Fall, visit http://seasonsafterfall.com/.