You know our motto: we make a guide when we love a game. Time for one of our guides on Season: A Letter to the Future. I previously reviewed and loved the game; you can find the review here. Now on with the guide.
The Beginning of Season: A Letter to the Future in Caro Village
As Estelle prepares to leave, her mother will ask her to collect items from around the house. Each item needs to correspond with one of her memories. While players might get hung up on this, you can’t really get it wrong. Each of the interactable items in the house will work to help build the pendant. Estelle’s mother will ask for one for three of the senses: scent, touch, and sight.
Choose three items in the house and hear out Estelle’s mother’s memories before they disappear forever. Once the ritual is over, she will pick up the finished pendant. The choices of this conversation will influence the memories that you get to overhear but will not influence the game’s story overall. The options are:
- On the desk to the left of Estelle’s mother, there is a Handprint of Estelle’s from when she was nine.
- On the cabinet near the kitchen sink, there is both a Ginger Drink and a Spoon.
- Near Estelle’s bedroom door, there is a basket with Dried Flowers and Honey Candy.
- On the other side of her bedroom door, there is a Candle.
- In Estelle’s bedroom, on the wall by the door, there is a Sketch of Her Father and a Photo of Her Parents.
- On the vanity, there is a Statue, a Ribbon, and a Folded Origami Crane.
- Behind her bed on the wall, there is a Bell.
- In the corner by the window, there is a Stuffed Bear.
- On the bookshelf, there is a Book of Tales.
- Look for a little blue desk to the far right side of the screen; on it is a Beetle and a Bills.
Once Estelle leaves her mother’s house, she will find herself out in the village. In Season: A Letter to the Future, you can interact with the world by looking at things, taking photos of them, or recording the sounds it makes. Some of the items that are important enough to make Estelle talk about them are:
- Record the sound of the music that Estelle hears as she walks away from her mother’s house, near the house with the laundry hanging from it on the right side of the street.
- Before heading down the stairs to the courtyard, record the sound of the little fountain to the left of the stairs.
- Take a photo of the tree in the centre of the courtyard.
- There is a ribbon at the base of the tree that can also be picked up.
- There is a fish-shaped cup on one of the tables in the courtyard.
In order to complete Estelle’s journal pages, players must take at least five pictures, recordings, or other things to completely fill it in. Here are the steps for filling in a journal page.
- Open the journal using the Select button on the controller or TAB on the keyboard.
- Press SHIFT or Start to open up the menu of items players have taken photos, recordings, or doodles of.
- Place at least any combination of four items to completely fill in the page.
- After a page is completely filled in, players will get more options to post on the page, such as stamps and quotes. If there is an orange exclamation mark beside the word KEEPSAKES in the upper left-hand corner of the journal’s page, there are new stamps, photos, recordings, or other things to post if the player chooses.
- Some journal pages require certain items to be recorded or photographed in order to fill them out completely.
- Completing any journal page will earn players the Journal Beautifier achievement.
In the village of Caro, Estelle will get three pages. One is for the ritual performed with her mother, which will automatically have enough items and players have to place them; one is for the village itself, which can be filled in with any pictures or items from around the village, and a special page for information about Dr Fumio. Fumio’s page can only be completed if players get:
- A photo of Dr Fumio’s statue. This is the statue standing above the fountain by the tree. Take a photo.
- A recording of the healing machine on the edge of the courtyard. If players are walking down the stairs from Estelle’s house, keep walking straight past the tree until there is a weird-looking instrument playing music. Take a recording of it.
- A photo of each of the three murals around the courtyard. If players are walking down the stairs from Estelle’s house, turn to the left at the bottom of them. There is a mural on the wall.
- The second mural is to the left. After walking down the stairs, turn left and walk past the Fumio statue fountain. There is a little covered porch all the way on the edge of the courtyard; the mural is on the wall there.
- To the right of the bottom of the stairs is a little cafe with a sign out front; the second mural is on the other side of the cafe.
- Once all these objects are collected, put them into their slots in the special page to complete it.
Players can continue taking photos on their way down from the village to get more info from Estelle on her life there. At the bottom of the stairs leading out, Estelle will get the choice of a pink, yellow, or blue bike to take with her into the world. This choice does not seem to affect the story in any way.
Once players leave the village, they will earn the achievement Home Leaver and Outside World Seer.
The Path Out of Caro Village
After grabbing a bike and heading out into the world, players can take new photos, collect items, and record sounds for a new location: the path out of Caro Village. There will be an old post office filled with letters, postcards, and other photo opportunities.
Also, there will be the first of many benches, places where Estelle can draw the surrounding area. When players interact with it, an option to “Sketch” will appear. Choose it to fill in a whole page of her sketchbook. Make sure to take photos and record anything of note, and also make some time to pet the goats on the way by.
The Long Journey in Season: A Letter to the Future
The next page players can make is called the Long Journey. This one is made automatically once they leave the path from Caro Village. Some places of note where players should take photos, sounds, and collectables are:
- The first turbine.
- The broken interstate bridge.
- The phone booths.
- The campsite.
- The bus stop.
After players move through this location, they will find a sign for Tieng Valley. Interact with the metal boards blocking the way to start the next cutscene. This will be an interview with the Elder of Caro Village, and she will be able to break down a little bit more information on the Golden Age and the War.
Tieng Valley
The Tieng Valley is where most of the game will take place. Season: A Letter to the Future players will spend most of their time here, and almost everything in the valley is missable. So you can do as little or as much of this as you would like.
To get started, players will want to take pictures of the entrance to the valley. It looks like a building with a truck out front. Here, Estelle will meet the first human outside of her village. He is part of a group called the Grey Hands and will give players the achievement Stranger Encounterer. Chat with him about the closing of Tieng Valley. He will give you the map of the valley and some information to help you out.
Several locations are important, and each is marked on the map.
- The Valley Entrance
- Serene Pond Area
- The Assembly Point
- The Phone
- Void’s Statue
- Memory Flower Page
- Dig Site
- The Ancient Tree
- The Fruit Farm
- Din’s Statue
- The Shrine of the Three Gods
- The Cemetery
- Achievement
- Cemetery Path
- The Parking Lot
- Tide Statue
- Drawing Bench
- The Artist’s Home
- East Forest Path
Most Pages Don’t Have Special Requirements to Finish in Season: A Letter to the Future
To complete this section, players just need to take photos of the area, look at the bulletin board near the entrance to the valley, and interact with everything you can before walking into the valley itself. There are several other areas that can be completed in the same way, including the Cemetery, the Parking Lot, and many of the others. If the location is listed below, there are special, missable things that can be done or players will need specific items to complete its page.
- The Valley Entrance can be completed with just five images or items.
- The Serene Pond Area can also be completed with any five items.
- While the Assembly Point can be filled in with any five items, there are some special items that need attention there to fill out the Gray Hands Page.
- Like the Assembly Point, the Dig Site can be filled out with any items, but it also has special items needed to fill out the Grey Hands Page.
- The Fruit Farm needs any five items but has a few things that have to be done to get all the achievements in Season: A Letter to the Future.
- The Ancient Tree needs any five items.
- The Cemetery needs any five items and has a bench for drawing.
- The Parking Lot needs any five items. Also it will trigger a special page What Happened During the War? All items for this second page will also be in the Parking lot.
- The Artist’s Home needs any five items. It also has two benches near it.
- The Shrine Path needs any five items.
- There is one achievement at the Cow Farm, but it just needs any five items.
- The West Forest Path just needs any five photos or recordings.
- The Dream Listener achievement can be gotten at any of the three drawing benches in the Valley. Just select “Listen” when siting down.
Deep Listener Season: A Letter to the Future Achievement
To get Deep Listener, players will need to keep an eye out for memory flowers. These can be found in many places around this map; they will announce their presence by making the air shimmer purple around Estelle when she passes them. Use the recorder to record the flowers’ sound memory and earn the Deep Listener Achievement.
The Cow’s Pasture
At the cow pasture, players can grab the Music for Cows achievement. Near the grain silo, there is a barrel with a radio on it.
Turn it on and listen to the Grey Hands Radio announcement all the way through. After that, players will have the option to turn it off, switch channels, or leave. Hit “switch channels,” and a cutscene will play, giving players the achievement.
The Assembly Point, the Grey Hands Page, and the Praxis Achievement
At the Assembly Point, players will be able to get the Grey Hands Praxis 101 Achievement, fill out the Assembly Point Page, and get all the items for the Grey Hand Page.
- Collect items and photos around the site; get five items to fill out the Assembly Point Page.
- Take the survey on the clipboard to the left of the entrance, the application for new residents of the city form by the entrance, and the “New Season” handouts on the snack table near the film reel.
- Get the Grey Hands Praxis 101 Achievement by interacting with all the Grey Hands’ propaganda and the paper in the trash that says “Lies.”
Players can also watch the reel; then they should head further down the road to the phone booth.
The Phone in Season: A Letter to the Future
Next to the Assembly Point, there is a phone. This phone will ring when players walk by the first time, and the person on the other side will give some information about something left at the Dig Site.
After this, Estelle can call others on the phone, including the number for the dam flood questions.
When players dial this, they find out that there is actually no information about the flood, and the call center for it is designed to lead you around in circles. But you can spend quite a bit of time interacting with the number in order to make it say something new.
There are several phone numbers hidden around the valley, and players can try to dial them as they find them. There will be one on the radio at the Cow Pasture to rename the Grey Hands, on the map and some other places. Here are all the phone numbers in Season.
- 0019 – Call to suggest a new name for the Grey Hands. Found on the radio in the cow’s pasture.
- 2324 – The Dam Flood hotline found in the Assembly Station.
- 0026 – To Call the shrine and talk to the monk inside, named Easel. (this number is disconnected)
- 0023 – The Fruit Farm: Sophon (this number is disconnected)
- 0024 – The Fruit Farm: Sophon’s kid, Kochi (this number is disconnected)
- 0025 – The Artist, named Matyora (this number is disconnected)
- 1122 – On a poster outside of the Dig Site for a dream help line.
The Dig Site in Season: A Letter to the Future
After playing with the phone for a while, players will want to head across the bridge and to the left to get to the Dig Site. This site will not only open up a Dig Site page in the journal, but will also open up another page called What is the Dig Site For? and another called What is Day Zero? To finish all these pages, players need to:
To finish the What is the Dig Site For? page:
- Collect, photograph, or record any five things around the Dig Site for the page.
- Unlock the What is the Dig Site For? Page by interacting with one of the four items on it.
- The four items are the City Pamphlet, the clipboard, the hand-written notes, and the recorder.
- The City Pamphlet is located on the folding tables under the big blue tent. It is next to the two white plates.
- The Clipboard is located on the piles of boxes labeled “Fragile” in the second part of the Dig Site. It will have a channel on it, and players can listen to the speech on the radio near the entrance to the Dig Site.
- The handwritten notes are located under the same tent as the clipboard above; look to the left part of the tent on top of a table.
- The recording device with the last piece of the puzzle is hard to miss; toward the end of the Dig Site’s loop, there is a table with a water-filled altar on it. Interact with the recording and make sure to record it for your journal.
How to Complete the What is Day Zero? Page:
- Take a photo of the graph located next to the table with the altar and the recording device.
- Record the voice on the radio station 63.2 found on the clipboard for the previous page.
- Look inside the tin box on top of the barrel with the sticker on the top. This is the material that is mentioned on the phone if players answer the ringing phone by the Assembly Point before coming here. Open the box up and Estelle will pull out a Reel.
- In order to watch this reel and get the last part of the Day Zero Page, head back to the Assembly Point and put it into the projector. This is the last item needed to complete this page.
The Parking Lot and What Happened During the War Page
Once players enter the parking lot, a new page for it will be added to the journal. But if Estelle takes a photo of the sleeping soldiers, takes a photo of the vending machine, records the memory flowers next to the vending machine, or takes the newspaper article next to the shrine to the lost, the “What happened during the war?” page will become available.
These are the four items needed to complete the What Happened During the War? page.
The Shrine of the Three Gods in Season: A Letter to the Future
There is a page for both the shrine and the path to the shrine, which can be filled out with any photos or interactions in those areas. Shrine Arriver is an achievement for showing up in this location. Interacting with the sign-out front shows Estelle that the Shrine won’t be open until sundown, so she’ll have to speak to the artist before she can enter this building.
In front of the doors of the shrine are three big stones, all with symbols and names carved into them. Taking a photo of each of these will open up the pages for each one of the named gods.
The first is Void, the god shrine located across the courtyard from the doors to the shrine.
Din is to one side of the Void.
And Tide is to the other side of Void’s stone. Make sure to take a photo of each one of these stones to start each of their pages.
Void’s Page
In order to fill out each of the gods’ pages, players will first need to take photos of their stones at the shrine’s front door. This will give you both one of the photos and the doodle of the symbol. Fill in these in each of their locations in the page.
The other three items can be found at each of the god’s unique locations on the map. Void is located by the Dig Site all the way to the north. It is surrounded by a whole bunch of memory flowers. To get there, cross one of the two bridges over water and head to the left. Keep heading north and west until the Dig Site then the Void Statue is reached.
Players need to take a photo of the statue for the Who is the Void? page.
Also, another thing needed to finish the Void page is one of the prayers. Estelle will read through three of them, and you will need to pick one of the three. The choice doesn’t appear to effect the ending.
Once the Void rock at the Shrine has been interacted with, the photo of Void has been taken, and a red prayer paper has been taken, you can now interact with the altar of the Void. Walk up to the basin and choose to pray. It will ask which god Estelle is to pray to. Choosing Din or Tide will make nothing happen. If Estelle chooses Void, she will have the option to give a memory to the god or not.
The choice doesn’t seem to affect the ending in any way, but players will either leave there with their minds intact, or they will lose their name forever.
Din’s Page
Just like Void, players will need to take a photo of the stone at the Shrine, then collect the other items.
Head down the stairs across from the Shrine’s doorway. Head down the Shrine Path (which is another page) and down this road until you come across Din’s statue.
Din’s statue looks like a giant animal with a weird patterned tongue hanging out. Take a photo of the statue.
Interact with the little mailbox-looking thing with the red slips of paper in it to choose a prayer.
Then and only then will you be able to pray at the basin. Make sure to choose Din; the other names will not work.
Make sure to fill in Din’s page with everything Estelle learns.
Tide’s Page
The last of the gods’ pages is Tide. Take a photo of Tide’s rock at the Shrine, then head to the east, away from the entrance to the Valley and down the path. Players will find Tide’s statue toward the bottom of the hill.
This will give Estelle a dream. Players can choose either to tell their mom that they are okay or to tell her to make pendants. This choice doesn’t seem to change the ending, except it might make a huge difference to players once they realize what is coming.
The Roads from the Cemetery
While the Cemetery Path Page requires nothing special to complete, players can get a trophy here. Look for the giant statue of goats and walk past them toward the cliff’s edge. There will be some black paint there; use it to get the Graffiti Artist achievement and leave a mark on Tieng Valley.
The Ancient Tree and Love Uncoverer Achievement
There is a massive tree near the Fruit Farm that Kochi will bring Estelle to.
In the tree, look for a birdhouse with a locket. Interact with the locket. Then, when players eventually make their way to the artist, they will be able to ask her about it, giving players the Love Uncoverer achievement.
The Fruit Farm
When players arrive at the Fruit Farm, they will have a lot to do. There are goats to pet, papers to pick up, things to take photos of, and two people to interact with. Head west of the house and look for a woman in pink. Her name is Sophon, and helping her with all her chores will give players the Emotional Baggage Handler achievement.
- Talking to Sophon will trigger the Life on the Lawn Page.
- There will be several things on the lawn to interact with.
- Help her choose a book.
- Help her choose an outfit.
- Help her choose a painting.
- Next, players will be able to interact with tools and with some photos, asking Sophon more questions about her child and her husband.
- These choices don’t seem to have much of an impact on the story; regardless of whether players tell her to take everything or nothing, the cart will still break.
Players can also bring recordings of the Valley to Sophon and ask for her to talk about them. Next, players will have an option to take a tour of the valley with Kochi now that he has his bike back. This is for the Tour de Tieng achievement. He’ll lead you around the valley to help you find anything you may have missed.
- The tour begins at the Fruit Farm. Talk to Kochi, then follow him.
- The first stop is the Ancient Tree.
- The second stop is a part of the river where Kochi has a memory on the Forest Path.
- The third stop is the Parking Lot.
- The fourth stop is an overlook by the Shrine that overlooks the Fruit Farm.
- The last stop is the Cemetery.
The Artist’s Home
Players will need to leave the Artist’s Home for last; once they interact with the Artist and capture the valley in a moment with her, it will be nighttime. After this, Estelle will have some limitations on things she can complete. Also, when it is dark, it will be time to head to the Shrine.
Go to the Artist’s House and take a photo or pick up the little red aphorisms statue behind her house on the table. This will start the conversation with her. Keep interacting with her and taking photos of her work until she asks for your help capturing the Valley. She will then lead you to her junk pile to choose an item.
Choose either the violin, the religious piece, or the gun for the Valley’s history. After this cutscene, players will get the achievement for Artist Assistant after capturing Tieng Valley momentarily. Make sure to ask her about the locket after getting the achievement.
The Three Aphorisms of the Valley
There are three aphorisms in the Valley; these don’t give players an achievement or anything special, but they are interesting to see and interact with.
One is located at the Fruit Farm near the house. It is on the opposite side of the house where players can find Sophon.
The Second is on one of the upper graves in the Cemetery.
The last one is in the Artist’s House; it is behind her home near the table she sits at.
Inside the Shrine
Once players are done with the Artist and everything else above, they can head into the Shrine. The game will give you a heads-up before heading inside; make sure you’ve completed everything you want to inside the Valley.
Inside, players will meet Easel, a monk who has locked himself inside the Shrine. To meet him, interact with the TV, and he will wake up. Next:
- Interact with the basket on the ground next to the car for taste.
- Interact with the light panel on the floor and turn the lights on for sight.
- Pick up the doll that matches your doll back home for touch.
- Interact with the record player for sound.
- Light one of the incenses for the smell.
- Players can then complete the Shrine’s page.
Then, talk to Easel again. He will give you a photograph of one of three things; choose whichever one you like. He will then start the prayer needed to make a pendant for the whole valley, and players can make a choice to sacrifice their pendant or keep it for themselves.
This choice will alter the ending of the game, so make sure to contemplate it and choose wisely.
Players will then get to choose if they would take photos of everyone for the Grey Hands. Choose yes or no as you see fit. After the end of the series of cutscenes, players will earn the Goodbye Tieng Valley achievement.
To the Sea and Witness the End of the Season
The monk will drive Estelle to the ocean and ask her to turn on the lights. Look under the horn’s cliff to find another bench to sketch at. This will unlock the Shore’s Page.
At the seaside, Estelle will meet a new friend, and they will share journals. Play cannot proceed until players wake him up and chat with him. The choices made here do not seem to make a difference.
After chatting, players must walk through the dark and turn the lights on. It will be pretty dark, but head out into the water and look for the small light. Hit the button and watch the lights come up. Players will then have a chance to review their journals again before the end.
This will trigger the final cutscene and give players The End as they witness the end of the season. Depending on whether players choose to give up their pendant or not will change this ending.