Thank you Focus Home Interactive for sending us this game to review!

Seasons after Fall is a beautiful 2D puzzle platformer that features charming painted visuals, great voice acting, and excellent background music from a string quartet. If you’re searching for a lovely experience, this is it. Although this game is family friendly, it’s strongly focused on a nature religion that involves activating dormant altars to restore the forest to its former splendor.

Your character is a seed who has been called forth to possess a fox to gather essences of the seasons to harness their powers. With each essence collected, the fox can alter the environment around it and access areas previously inaccessible. For example, there are geysers that spring up more water in the springtime versus the summer. In winter mode, you can freeze the geysers and jump on them.

Other puzzles involve finding the correct season to activate plant bridges or open up mushrooms to hop onto them. Sometimes mushrooms will drop a crab-like creature which can sprout mushrooms in a designated area. One annoyance is trying to get one of those crab creatures to spawn after losing the previous one from a stupid mistake (they can’t swim so make sure you’re in winter mode).

Most of the puzzles are straightforward and I was able to figure them out on my own. While there are only a handful of locations, it is easy to get lost in them and a map would have come in handy. Thankfully, there are plenty of YouTube playthroughs available to point you in the right direction if you get lost or stuck.

The controls are pretty easy as your seed/fox can move, jump, and bark. Surprisingly, the seed cannot jump, but it can bark without the fox’s body which doesn’t make much sense to me. The fox’s yip is adorable and the voice acting of the guardian and seed guiding you are well done.
The seed giving you instructions isn’t all that she seems at first. When the fox finds places to sleep, her backstory slowly becomes revealed. Sadly, some instances of animal abuse are hinted at in the backstory. The fox can cause some crab-like creatures to explode if he barks at them in the winter. You’ll need to kill a few off to access some blocked paths.

Visually, this game is quite charming. I love the art style and each season has its own color palette. Summer has vibrant colors and fall uses various shades of orange. Winter has cool blues and shades of purple while springtime has a lot of rain and gray clouds.

If the nature religion theme doesn’t bother you, this game is bound to stimulate your senses. The puzzles will get you thinking a little bit, but some may find them too easy. The PC version of the game came out first and sells for $14.99 which is $5 cheaper than the console edition. If you enjoy puzzle platformers, you’ll want to keep an eye out for this one.